IS1225 
.C65F6 





















£°<* 



•• *>■ 















* 



♦ I 







A°< 













,4 0, 






;*a^ o v 3 ^-' 



, % ..... * o „ - % 



.Stf* 



v«* 



i€^ ^ >, '-lis?* - ** ^ °oOT^ V 









<* *<>.•* 4 0' 




1° <U & * ' 









5^ 






Co 9' 









^ ••«•" <r 



c* * 









:.• <?*++ -: 






CM 
COLENSO'S fallacies: 

ANOTHER 

REVIEW OF THE BISHOP OF NATAL. 



EEY. C. H. JFOWLEE, A. M. ^js. 

WITH CD 1 

V <•> 3 

AN INTRODUCTORY ESSAY AND REVIEW OMMT II,;v S^ 



BY REV. HENRY BANNISTER, D. D., 

« 

PROFESSOR OF HEBREW AND GREEK EXEGESIS AND BIBLICAL CRITICISM 
IN THE GARRETT BIBLICAL INSTITUTE. 



" Facts are stubborn tbiiig3. ; 
"Figures eau rot lie." 



CINCINNATI: 
PUBLISHED BY POE & HITCHCOCK. 

R. P. THOMPSON, PRINTER. 
1864. 



\Q-^ 6 






Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1864, 
BY POE & HITCHCOCK, 

In the Clerk's Office of the District Court for the Southern 
District of Ohio. 



Z S"2ii 



PREFACE, 



It is due the public, due the many writers 
who have so ably handled Colenso's book, and 
due me to state briefly how I came to venture 
into such a contest with such an opponent. 
When Colenso's book appeared, Dr. T. M. Eddy, 
editor of the North- Western Christian Advocate, 
requested me to write a review of it. After 
much hesitancy I consented, and as soon as my 
arduous duties would allow, I published the main 
body of the argument in the North -Western. 
In the argument I have tried to exhibit Colenso's 
radical fallacies, and to meet his arguments one 
by one in their order. Whatever others might 
think of it, I felt that it removed Colenso's diffi- 
culties, so far as my own mind was concerned. 

I felt paid for my labor by this fact, for I could 

3 



4 PREFACE. 

not preach a doctrine or system which was with- 
out foundation. I would not bow my soul one 
hour to any dogma which is not . clearly sup- 
ported by calm, honest reasoning. I can not take 
a truth which is logically worthless. In the 
double assurance of the purity and veracity of 
the Scriptures, which this investigation has given 
me, and in the approval of Him whose I am, and 
whom I serve, I looked for my reward. I had 
no idea that the argument would ever take any 
other form; but, at the request of Drs. Clark, 
Harris, Eddy, and others, and with the approval 
of Henry Bannister, D. D., I have added a re- 
view of Colenso's Introduction and Preface, and 
now give it to the public in this form, hoping for 

it only some usefulness. 

C. H. Fowler. 



CONTENTS. 



chapter. page. 
Peeface 3 

Inteoductoey Essay and Eeview of Paet 

II, by De. Bannisteb 7 

I. Statement of the Subject. 23 

II. Colenso's Position v^O,; 

III. The Beaeings of Colenso's Views upon the 

New Testament 42 

IV. The Eeal Question befoee Us dj6 ) 

V. The Question of Inspieation 61 

VI. Difficulties in Colenso's " Inteoductoey 

Kemaee:s" 67 

VII. The Family of Judah 80 

VIII. The Size of the Couet of the Tabernacle 
compaeed with the Number of the Con- 

geegation 89 

IX. Moses and Joshua addeessing all Iseael. 94 
X. The Extent of the Camp Compaeed with 
the Peiests' Duties and the Daily Ne- 
cessities of the People 98 

5 



O CONTENTS. 

CHAPTER.* PAGE. 

XI. The Number of the People at the First 
Muster compared with the Poll-Tax 

raised Six Months previously 101 

XII. The Tents and Arms of the Israelites. 106 

XIII. The- Institution of the Passover 107 

XIV. The March out of Egypt 113 

XV. The Sheep and Cattle of the Israel- 
ites in the Desert 116 

XVI. The Number of Israelites compared 
with the Extent of the Land of 

Canaan 121 

XVII. The Number of First-Born compared 

with the Number of Male Adults... 123 
XVIII. The Sojourning of the Israelites in 
Egypt, and the Exodus in the Fourth 

Generation 127 

XIX. The Number of the Iseaelites at the 

Exodus 134 

XX. The Kemaining Objections 136 



IKTEODUOTION. 



Whoever is familiar with the course of free 
thought, and the so-called critical inquiry into 
the character of the Sacred Scriptures for the 
last generation or tAVO among the Biblical schol- 
ars in Germany, has no need to feel surprise at 
the general spread — though late — of this spirit 
of criticism among intellectual classes, both in 
England and America. Thought and novel 
views, though dressed in ever so fallacious 
modes, will travel. Theories that in Germany 
have become almost effete from their errors and 
unsatisfactoriness, are now put forth in the En- 
glish language as worthy of greedy reception. 
The number of men of high learning, who now 
represent the school of independent criticism on 

the continent, is continually diminishing — Ewald 

7 



8 INTRODUCTION. 

and Hupfeld being the chief in Germany, and 
Ernest Renau in France ; while many in En- 
gland, and some in this country, are just be- 
ginning to shine forth as stars in this hue. Is 
it because the Anglo-Saxon mind is so dull, and 
perceives so slowly, that it begins at this late 
day to awake into a high interest in what the 
Teutons are casting away as stale and sapless? 
Or is our language so wanting in depth and 
tone as to keep our ideas floating on the sur- 
face till they receive a large infusion of spirit 
and thought from the Fatherland of Specula- 
tion ? Doubtless, neither of these. An unques- 
tionable good reason is, that with institutions 
civil, social, and commercial, to create and per- 
petually to mold, we deal almost solely with the 
practical and the concrete ; willing, for the most 
part, to leave deductions from the sphere of the 
critical and the abstract to the meditations of 
our less busy neighbors. 

But a class of persons would say — and are 
saying — that the chief reason is far otherwise. 



INTRODUCTION. 9 

They assign the difference between us and the 
German thinkers and students to the freedom 
allowed to speculation and critical thought with 
the latter, and to the restraints and fetters of 
dogmatism by which our own communities are 
bound. And they complain grievously of heavy 
clamors raised against all independent minds, 
however sincere and ingenuous, w T ho venture an 
opinion at variance with authorized creed or sym- 
bol. They allege that large classes of thought- 
ful and morally- earnest men are literally in a 
state of unrest as to the religious questions of 
the day ; and when a bold spirit within the 
folds of orthodoxy, like the Essayists, or like 
Bishop Colenso, shall dare to break from its 
trammels, and freely utter itself Qf its difficul- 
ties, it is no wonder that thousands, escaping 
under such auspices from beneath the repress- 
ing weight of dogmatic authority, shall, as by 
an elastic but indefinite rebound, fly away into 
all manner of reckless protests and disbeliefs. 
With ingenuous and earnest persons, they say, 



1 INTRODUCTION. 

the spirit of inquiry is irrepressible, and the 
harder the restraint you place upon it, the more 
determined will be the effort to break from it; 
and the only safeguard against a violent and 
narrow skepticism is a generous freedom of 
opinion, with no tribunals in terrorem for every 
so-called heretical aberration. 

There is both truth and sophistry in these al- 
legations. It is true that the exercise of think- 
ing not only should be, but is, as free as the air, 
and no human power can repress it. This is 
the inviolable birthright of all men. There could 
be no recognizable advance in knowledge without 
it ; no propositions of thought would be formed ; 
no waymarks to science could be set up ; no goal 
could be fixed in the distance to which to direct 
the soul's thoughts and aspirations. It is true, 
also, that freedom of religious opinion is an ab- 
solute right to every individual. To repress 
this would be an act of spiritual despotism, as 
shocking to the free spirit of the Gospel as it 
would be an unwarranted violence against the 



INTRODUCTION. 11 

principles of our Protestantism. It is only by 
a reverent use of this right, the use of critical 
but prayerful inquiry, that the sacred deposit 
of Divine truth — or, in other words, a definite 
treasure of religious doctrine — has been discov- 
ered. It was so from the beginning. When 
God revealed his purposes and thoughts to men, 
the use of their reason was put in requisition to 
comprehend those revelations ; and it continues 
so to the present time. But it is a strange view 
of the history of our race to suppose that no 
result has yet been attained from the free ex- 
ercise of religious thought during all the ages 
past — no body of doctrine collected worthy to 
bow down to as authority. Those who feel 
crushed under the despotism of religious dogmas, 
never complain much of their mental sufferings 
under authoritative systems of jurisprudence and 
civil law. The expounders of these systems 
have gone clear of opprobrium, while teachers 
of religion are tabooed as tyrants over free 
mind and conscience. The truth is, the freest 



12 INTRODUCTION. 

thinkers are the greatest dogmatizers. They 
croak about the slavery of thought among the 
religious sects, and, as substitutes for the long- 
settled symbols of Christendom, they each com- 
mend their own differing theories. Authority 
they can not, in the nature of things, ignore; 
the limitations of finite mind compel a submis- 
sion to a supreme decision of some kind. 
Hence, as a last resort, the Absolute Relig- 
ion — a religious abstraction existing as a com- 
mon possession in the faculties of the race — is 
made the ultimate arbiter. 

This is the goal which Bishop Colenso would 
surely reach, if it were possible, to unmake him 
from his constitutional tendency to think always 
in the concrete. In his volume, Part I, which 
the following review of Mr. Fowler attends to 
with such admirable directness and concentrated 
force, he seldom cuts loose his conceptions from 
his favorite science of numbers; he can not 
render thought abstract by disengaging it of its 
factors ; he is thus unable to see the points of 



INTRODUCTION. 13 

view from which the narratives of the Penta- 
teuch were written; the mode of conception in 
those narratives he wholly mistakes, and so mis- 
states ; unable to discern any difference between 
ancient and modern idioms of speech, he is led 
to assertions and violent assumptions which even 
a child would not admit; and yet, after emas- 
culating by his tests the Pentateuch and Joshua 
of every shred of historic truth, after attempt- 
ing to destroy all confidence in the inspired 
character of those Scriptures to which the 
prophets, the Savior, and the apostles referred 
as absolute authority for their own teachings, 
what do you imagine he reserves for his and 
our feet to stand on as our eternal foundation? 
Simply that remainder of Truth to be found 
only in the devout spirit of those writings ; and 
a spirit of truth to be found, " not in the Bible 
only, but also out of the Bible — not to us Chris- 
tians only, but to our fellow-men of all climes 
and countries, ages and religions."* It is the 

* Part I. p. 222 



14 INTRODUCTION. 

Universal Religion, then — his mind is not formed 
to grasp the Pantheistic Absolute Religion — to 
which he pays court; of which, in his view, 
Christ's spirit was the embodiment — his refer- 
ences, quotations, allusions, and so forth, to 
writings of old being only accommodating illus- 
trations of it. To this, Colenso bows with su- 
preme devotion and awe. This is his authority ; 
and he would that the boundaries of the Church 
of England were enlarged " to make her all that 
a national Church should be," embracing in her 
fold the Holyoakes, and Martineaus, and West- 
minster Review writers, " and all the piety, and 
learning, and earnestness, and goodness of the 
nation." 

Does it become Colenso and his school to 
utter their groans about intolerance? If you 
are in your citadel, and some of your men lay 
trains to fire your magazine simply to level the 
walls which divide and defend you from your 
foes, because, as they in their wisdom deem it, 
the occasion for defensive measures no longer 



INTRODUCTION. 15 

exists, which, between yourself and your con- 
spirators, would be the intolerant men? In a 
light like to this we can not but regard the case 
of Bishop Colenso. He will not resign ; he can 
not heed friendly counsel to retire; he defies 
civil and ecclesiastical action ; he will be a mar- 
tyr, if he must be ; or if not dealt with he shall 
batter away still on the bulwarks of the Church. 
And he has written another book — his Second 
Part — in which, like the former effort, he has 
brought forward not one new thing — not one 
objection or position which has not been a score 
of times disposed of. All his salient points of 
inquiry originated for substance with the ration- 
alists long time ago, and have been met, and 
for years put hors de combat, by rejoinders as 
searching and comprehensive as the critical as 
sailants could well desir^J Having in Ms first 
>ook addressed himself to the work of demol- 
ishing the authority of the Pentateuch as an 
historical record, in his second volume he sets 
himself to prove that it was written, not by 




16 INTRODUCTION. 

Moses, but probably by Samuel — at least, the 
groundwork of it — but touched and retouched, 
and finally completed, by later authors. He 
admits that his arithmetic fails him as an in- 
strument of criticism here, and that his field 
of operation is one of conjecture. Yet he echoes 
the old-fashioned views of his German masters, 
that the original narrative consisted of at least 
two characteristic compositions or documents, 
known respectively as the Elohist and the Je- 
hovist documents. The two names of Deity, 
Elohim and Jehovah, distinguishing them, are 
usually admitted by those who maintain the 
historical accuracy of the Pentateuch to mean — 
the one, Deity as worshiped by the Patriarchs; 
the other, Deity as pledged to be the covenant 
God of the Israelites. Nevertheless, both names 
involve essentially the same meaning, the acci- 
dental difference, if any, being that there is 
conceived the aspect of Divine power more in 
the one, and the aspect of self-existence more 
in the other. But certainly both names are 



INTRODUCTION. 17 

often used interchangeably in the Old Testa- 
ment. This, however, Colenso disputes. But 
as his positions are confessedly based on con- 
jecture, his arguments amount to nothing. Our 
object is not a review, but a mere notice of his 
arguments, which, with brief comments^ we ap- 
pend to each, are substantially as follows : ^ 
^ l^He thinks that a difference of authorship \ ft /, /) 
of these documents is proved by contradictory \ 
statements in them. But we think the follow- / ^-^ 
ing searching review of Mr. Fowler shows that I c 
it is not so proved. There is no essential con- j / 
tradiction in the entire narrative. 

2. He conjectures that the author of the one 1 
document uses exclusively the name Elohim, and \ 
the author of the other, exclusively, the name 
Jehovah. But how is this even conjecturally I 
proved? Not by difference of style in other 
respects ; nor because it is ever claimed that 
Elohim is a different being from Jehovah; nor 
because the two names were not sometimes in- 
terchangeablv used. 




18 INTRODUCTION. 

f 3/ He thinks that because the name Jehovah 
was not ostensibly revealed till the occurrence 
of the event mentioned in Exodus vi, 3, there- 
fore the Elohistic and the Jehovistic writers are 
proved to be different persons. What child 
may not see that this does not follow? Must 
Genesis have been necessarily w T ritten before the 
event of revealing the name Jehovah took place, 
as described in the sixth chapter of Exodus ? 
'■■ 4. Me claims that, as far as to the story of 
Joseph, individual names receive more or less 
the letters of the name Elohim, but none of 
the name Jehovah ; and this he considers strong 
evidence of different authorship, because later 
in the Pentateuch, as well as in Joshua, the 
letters of the name Jehovah are found more or 
less in individual names. Strong evidence ! 
strong trifling, rather ! What has the fact that 
parents name their children as they please to 
do with an author's narrating this circumstance 
in after ages ? But the assumption is not to 
be admitted for a moment that such is the 



INTRODUCTION. 19 

case, as any one may ascertain by consulting 
almost any page in Genesis, where names occur, 
and as the representative names, Isaac, Jacob, 
and Joseph also disprove ; and if it were, of what 
value to the argument would be the isolated let- 
ters e and I and m in an occasional name? 

These are but specimens of the sort of crit- 
icism relied on by Bishop Colenso to sustain 
the grave position that the Pentateuch was not 
written by Moses. , : But as it is no object of 
tliis article to enter into a formal discussion 
with this his second argument against the his- 
torical character of the Pentateuch, we close by 
saying we regard this far the weaker of his two 
books, proceeding as it does throughout on a 
petitio princijni, with reference to the meaning 
and scope of the sacred names Elohim and 
Jehovah. There is no agreement among the de- 
structive theorizers respecting them ; and Heng- 
stenberg, and Kurtz, and Keil, and other reac- 
tionary champions, have not yet been displaced 
from their unanimous sentiments upon them. 



20 INTRODUCTION. 

In this second volume Colenso exhibits a 
more deep and deadly committal to the work 
of destroying confidence in the Bible; and the 
next book, which he assures us will soon be 
forthcoming, will doubtless show him still more 
relentless and unsparing. The die is cast with 
him; and from being, as. he was perhaps in the 
start, an honest and earnest inquirer, he will 
proceed on till — by reason of his ill-balanced 
and consequently ill-judging mind — he will be- 
come, we fear, under evil influences, both a bad 
and dangerous man. 

But the foundations are sure. We will not 
deprecate this ruthless — this destructive criti- 
cism. The English mind was recently moved 
from its theological lethargy by the issue of 
the "Essays and Reviews." But a thousand 
pens were soon astir; and now may we reason- 
ably hope that stronger and more definite views 
of Biblical doctrine and fact will be eliminated 
from the literature that has been produced on 
these assaults against our precious Bible. So 



INTRODUCTION. 21 

of Colenso and his doings. Little harm and 
much good will come of them. Those predis- 
posed to skepticism will wax stronger for a 
time. But the sifting that is set on foot will 
soon distinguish the chaff from the wheat, the 
dross from the gold — and the former shall be, 
as always aforetime, the unsatisfying food of the 
skeptic; while the latter shall continue the solid 
sustaining substance of the lover of revealed 
truth. The Scriptures will not be the ultimate 
sufferer for the ordeal they are now passing. A 
thousand-fold the gainer shall they be. Many 
misapprehensions of Biblical statement may per- 
chance be corrected in this trial. Investigation 
of points heretofore unnoticed, because unas- 
sailed, will result in establishing and strongly 
fortifying new outposts. Discussion will orig- 
inate many arguments before unthought of for 
the truth. Some new constructions may require 
to be adopted ; some new attitudes of mind may 
be demanded; some new points of view may be 
taken, from which to look at certain scenes of 



22 INTRODUCTION. 

the divine narrative. All candor shall be exer- 
cised toward suggestions and instructions that 
unwittingly may come even from the enemy. 
So let it be settled in all minds — the truth of 
God is in no danger. The duty of its defend- 
ers is rather to welcome its assailants and give 
vigorous battle in return, than to fear and trem- 
ble, and cry out, " If the foundations be removed, 
what can the righteous do?" We tvelcome and 
warmly commend the new defender herewith en- 
suing. H. Bannister. 



COLENSO'S FALLACIES. 



CHAPTEE I, 

STATEMENT OF THE SUBJECT. 

The Athenian orator in opening his orations 
was wont to invoke the aid of all the gods 
and goddesses, that he might be guided to right 
results in his search for truth. In undertaking 
any work that may affect the faith, and, conse- 
quently, the destiny of my fellow-men, I can not 
do less. Believing, as I most sincerely do, that 
God sends his Spirit to enlighten his children 
when they ask it, I humbly pray for the guid- 
ance of that Spirit which is sent into the world 
to lead men " into all truth." Knowing that it 
is so much easier to denounce than to refute, and 

so much more natural to censure than to commiser- 

23 




24 COLENSO'S FALLACIES. 

ate, I humbly ask that the Great Father — father 
alike of the erring and of the obedient — may ena- 
ble me to walk carefully along that path of charity 
so seldom pressed by the feet of disputants ! 

In controversy, the weapons are arguments ; 
the material, facts ; the science, logic ; and the 
result sought, truth. Thus name and position 
are excluded — combatants always meet as equals. 
A fact in the mouth of a lad is as much a fact as 
it would be in the mouth of a sage. From this 
follow two conclusions, which I beg the reader to 
remember : 1. That where the logic drives us we 
must go; 2. That the former or present character 
of Colenso is not an element in the calculation. 
If his objections are sound and unanswerable, 
they remain so in spite of his bad character ; if 
they are not, his having a good character would 
not help them. Yet it may not be amiss to give 
some of the facts of Colenso' s life and character. 






1. His public life sums up thus : He has ac- 
quired some little reputation as a scholar — has 
published a few works which have been well 



STATEMENT OF THE SUBJECT. 25 

received by the public. His chief characteristic 
is his mathematical endowment, which when sane 
was his glory, but now is his notoriety and ruin. 
His first productions were some works on mathe- 
matics. Then followed four or five small books 
aiming at being devotional. The first symptoms 
of his monomania, which I regard as the most 
charitable explanation of his stupendous fallacies, 
appeared in his next work, claiming to be a 
translation and exposition of the Epistle to the 
Romans from " a missionary point of view." In 
this he succeeds in taking the life out of the 
Gospel by rationalizing conversion and justifica- 
tion. Late in 1862 he fully committed his his- 
tory and his soul to the cause of infidelity in the 
work which we are now considering. That its 
contradictions and imbecility defeat and deaden 
its malignity I trust we shall see before we close 
these few pages. 

2. We speak next of Colenso's progress in 
infidelity. From a careful study of his Preface, 
which he so shrewdly puts in from an unmailed 



26 COLENSO'S FALLACIES. 

letter to a friend, one is impressed with this fact, 
that Bishop Colenso, by the order of the Church of 
England, went to Natal to convert the Zulus, and 
the Zulus — intelligent natives — converted him ; 
and in the zeal infused by his new light, he goes 
back to England to convert the Church to Zulu 
and skepticism. See the process by which he 
was led to give up the Pentateuch — pages 4 and 5. 
After speaking of his thorough knowledge of the 
Zulu tongue, he says : 

" Thus, however, it has happened that I have 
been brought again face to face with questions 
which caused me some uneasiness in former 
days, but with respect to which I was then ena- 
bled to satisfy my mind sufficiently for practical 
purposes, and I had fondly hoped to have laid 
the ghosts of them at last forever. Engrossed 
with parochial and other work in England, I did 
what, probably, many other clergymen have done 
under similar circumstances — I contented myself 
with silencing, by means of the specious expla- 
nations which are given in most commentaries, 



STATEMENT OF THE SUBJECT. 27 

the ordinary objections against the historical 
character of the early portions of the Old Testa- 
ment, and settled down into a willing acquies- 
cence in the general truth of the narrative, what- 
ever difficulties might still hang about particular 
parts of it. In short, the doctrinal and devo- 
tional portions of the Bible were what were 
needed most in parochial duty. And, if a pas- 
sage of the Old Testament formed at any time 
the subject of a sermon, it was easy to draw 
from it practical lessons of daily life, without 
examining closely into the historical truth of the 
narrative. It is true, there were one or two 
stories which presented great difficulties, too 
prominent not to be noticed, and which were 
brought every now and then before' us in the 
Lessons of the Church, such, e. g., as the account 
of the Creation and the Deluge. But, on the 
whole, I found so much of Divine light and life 
in these and other parts of the Sacred Book — so 
much wherewith to feed my own soul and the 
souls of others — that I was content to take all 



28 COLENSO'S FALLACIES. 

this for granted, as being true in the main, how- 
ever wonderful, and as being at least capable, in 
an extreme case, of some sufficient explanation." 
This looks like a plain statement, and it must 
be either true or false. If he did not find Di- 
vine light and life, and much to feed his own soul 
and the souls of others, he is perjured ; if he did, 
he exhibits an ingratitude measured only by his 
irrationality in rejecting a system full of "light, 
and life, and food," for a system that is dark, 
and dead, and " enfamined." What can measure 
the unkindness to the race of a man who, be- 
cause he finds God's Word analogous to his 
providence, in that it contains things too deep 
for a little finite mind, and here and there a 
statement capable of misconstruction, on this 
account rejects that Word so full of "practical 
lessons of daily life," containing "so much of 
Divine fife and light," and puts in its stead a 
system which can never reach down to the com- 
mon people, and can never safely guide even the 
learned ! However unreasonable it may be, Co- 






STATEMENT OF THE SUBJECT. 29 

lenso, by the questions of a Zulu native, has 
been forced to let go his hold upon the truth, 
and put his eternity at stake, when his only hope 
hangs on his success in battering down the pil- 
lars of God's throne. With the simple state- 
ments of Christ before him, that against the 
Church "the gates of hell shall not prevail," 
(Matt, xvi, 18 ;) and, " Verily I say unto you, till 
heaven and earth pass, one jot or one tittle shall 
in no wise pass from the law till all be fulfilled," 
(Matt, v, 18,) it must have seemed a faint hope 
upon which to hazard a soul. 



30 



CHAPTEE II. 

COLENSO'S POSITION. 

Colbnso's ground must be fairly understood, 
then we will know where to meet him, and how 
to measure his arguments. 

Ql7)He is flatly and squarely infide l. He does 
attempt to conceal this by putting himself for- 
ward as the disciple of the " God of truth," and 
affirming his faith in the possibility of miracles, 
yet his position, declaring the unhistorical char- 
acter of the Pentateuch, unmasks his true char- 
acter. Read what he says on page 53, and 
decide for yourself. 

We need only consider well the statements 
made in the books themselves, by whomsoever 
written, about matters which they profess to 
narrate as facts of common history — statements 
which every clergyman, at all events, and every 



COLENSO'S POSITION. 31 

Sunday school teacher, not to say every Chris- 
tian, is surely bound to examine thoroughly, and 
try to understand rightly, comparing one passage 
with another till he comprehends their actual 
meaning, and is able to explain that meaning to 
others. If we do this, we shall find them to 
contain a series of manifest contradictions and 
inconsistencies, which leave us, it would seem, 
no alternative but to conclude that main portions 
of the story of the Exodus, though based, prob- 
ably, on some real historical foundation, yet are 
certainly not to he regarded as historically true." 
(j2^ Colenso commits the fearful error of mak^ 
ing unaided reason superior to revelation. He 
puts his own ideas of Grod and eternity a,bove 
the teachings of Jesus, whose servant he claims 
to be, forgetting that " the disciple is not above 
his master, nor the servant above his lord." 
(Matt, x, 24.) Hear him from page 54, where 
he says : 

" And it is, perhaps, God's will that we shall 
be taught in this our day, among other precious 



6Z COLENSO S FALLACIES. 

lessons, not to build up our faitli upon a book, 
though it be the Bible itself, but to realize more 
truly the blessedness of knowing that he himself, 
the living God, our father and friend, is nearer 
and closer to us than any book can be — that his 
voice within the heart may be heard continually 
by the obedient child that listens for it, and that 
shall be our teacher and guide, in the path of 
duty, which is the path of life, when all other 
helpers — even the words of the best of books — 
may fail us." 

This passage I think contains one of the main 
ideas runnmg through Colenso's work. So let 
us examine it : 

The first thing that presents itself is this: 
" We are not to build up our faith upon a book, 
though it be the Bible itself." Now, if by " book " 
is simply meant so much paper in a given shape, 
with so many characters stamped upon it, then 
there is no issue between us. But if by " book " 
is meant the truths and teachings contained in 
the volume, then we are at issue. This opens 



33 



into the wide field of evidences, which I do not 
purpose to repeat here. They are familiar to 
every scholar. I only refer to this point to bring 
forward Colenso's true character. The heathen 
world without this Bible have not made much 
progress toward God. The facts show that they 
have gone all the while away from him into the 
darkness. History shows that all the races have 
taken the leap over the precipice of sin, all have 
tried the experiment of disobedience, and that 
those people which have had this book and built 
up their faith upon it have gone up into civiliza- 
tion and moral power, while the people which 
have rejected, or have not this book to build 
upon, have, without a single exception, gone down 
to barbarism and beastliness. If we are better 
without this book, why have not the Zulus sent 
out missionaries, before the coming of Colenso, 
to convert Christendom? There are some things 
so absurd that it is different to disprove them, 
and this denial of our need of the Bible is one 
of this class. 



34 COLENSO'S FALLACIES, 

The second thing in this paragraph worthy of 
the Bishop is this : we are " to realize more truly 
the blessedness of knowing that he himself, the 
living God, our father and friend, is nearer and 
closer to us than any book can be." Where do 
we learn any thing about him as the living God, 
or as our father, or as our friend? Only from 
this book, and for these reasons, Nature can not 
teach us God. It does lead us to feel that there 
is somewhere a being or a force that works the 
world, but it teaches us notliing concerning him. 
The ignorant, as all become who have not the 
Bible, sum up the teachings of Nature in a block 
of marble, or a lump of clay, or a stick of wood, 
and they never get any higher. Seen from Na- 
tal, this may be an advance ; but seen from Amer- 
ica or England, it is a fearful retrograde. The 
learned, who, having the light which radiates from 
the Bible, yet reject the book itself, sum up the 
teachings from Nature in a thin, impalpable, ethe- 
real idea, of a something like the subtile ether in 
which we and the stars float alike ; at best it is 



35 



the abstract idea of power. There is no per- 
sonality, no "living God," no " father," no 
" friend" about it. These ideas are ail centered 
in Jesus of Nazareth, the divine man who first 
taught the race to pronounce, with their full 
meaning, those blessed words, "Our Father." 
Nature looked at with the dim eye of reason is 
but God's shadow, indicating to a few master- 
minds, endowed above their kind, not who or 
what that being is which revelation calls " God " 
and " Father," but simply that somewhere up in 
the infinite unknown he exists. Reason only 
handles the garment, while our souls want the 
wearer. This the race has never found, save in 
Christ as revealed in this book, which Colenso 
would have us abandon for mummeries and idols. 

The third thing in this paragraph worthy of 
note is this, that " Ids voice within the heart shall 
be our teacher and guide in the path of duty, 
when all other helpers — even the words of the 
best of books — fail us." 

By his selection of words utterly unworthy of 



36 COLENSO'S FALLACIES. 

a scientifically-accurate critic, Colenso gets the 
same advantage which a rattlesnake has in the 
grass — you can hear him and know he is some- 
where, but where you can not tell. He must 
mean by a his voice within the heart," either 
reason, or inspiration, or conscience. I think 
this catalogue is exhaustive. If he means rea- 
son, his trust is poorly placed, because reason 
can not teach us any thing concerning the in- 
finite, beyond mere existence and a few confused 
utterances about power and wisdom. If it can 
teach us any thing definite and positive, why has 
it not done it ? One thinker has but set up his 
theory of what is true, when some other thinker 
has annihilated it. I will not protract — the pain- 
ful fact is patent on the very face of history. If 
he means inspiration, why does he deny to Moses 
what he claims for every body else? He con- 
cedes the very thing he is combating. Why has 
it always happened that this "voice within," 
which is to be "our teacher and guide" when 
the Word of God shall fail us, has always been 



COLENSO'S POSITION. 37 

a false teacher and a treacherous guide? for 
history has not yet recorded one instance among 
the hundreds of millions of experiments where 
this guide has not led down to barbarism. 

If he means conscience, he has but poorly 
studied psychology ; for conscience never teaches 
or guides — it only gives point to what the judg- 
ment approves. Its character is dependent upon 
education. The character of its comments is 
taken from what the individual already believes. 
It never leads the way. And then see how it fails ! 
There is not a creed so absurd which it has not 
sanctioned; there is not a crime which it has 
not approved; there is not an altar at which 
it has not bowed. Its hands have bowed the 
head of the martyr and lighted his death fagot. 
No great wrong has ever existed which has not 
enlisted its support. Aside from the light of the 
Bible, it is no criterion of right. And is this to 
be our guide and our teacher ? Surely we must 
prefer the sure Word of God. 
^37)Colenso, judged by this book, is unfair and 



38 COLENSO'S FALLACIES. 

d ishonest. Under the pretense of devotion to the 
truth, he uses his utmost power in destroying the 
truth. Claiming to be a disciple, he not only 
sells the Lord for "thirty pieces of silver," but 
also joins the guard in casting lots for his gar- 
ments.* At page 45 he says, "Whatever the 
result may be, it is our bounden duty to 'buy 
the truth' at any cost, even at the sacrifice, if 
need be, of much which we have hitherto held to 
be most dear and precious." Yet at page 89 
he willfully suppresses the truth; for he omits, 
from the text quoted, the explanation of a term, 
that he may object to its not being explained. 
Also, page 67, he misrepresents the number of 
Jacob's wives — " as to Leah herself and the other 
wives of Jacob;" whereas, Colenso must have 
known that Jacob had only one other wife. But 
this turn seemed necessary to beat off the ex- 
planation of Kurtz, and, therefore, as a disciple 



*He has received £30,000 from the sale of this book, and 
still refuses to resign his bishopric. 



COLENSO'S POSITION. 39 

of the truth, it was his bounden duty to clear 
up his theory. 

\4j Colenso exhibits the same lack of honesty 
in h is dealings with the Church, which every - 
whe re cha racterizes his tr eatm e nt of the B ible. 
"In reference to what common honesty requires 
of him in his relations to the Church, he says, 
page 34: 

"As a bishop of that Church I dissent en- 
tirely from the principle laid down by some, that 
such a question as that which is here discussed 
is not even an open question for an English 
clergyman — that we are bound by solemn obli- 
gations to maintain certain views, on the points 
here involved, to our lives' end, or, at least, to 
resign our sacred office in the Church as soon as 
ever we feel it impossible any longer to hold 
them." 

It seems to me that there is an unfair use 
of the word " some." The truth would have 
prompted the use of " the Church." The ques- 
tion is simply whether a man ought to be loyal 



40 COLENSO'S FALLACIES. 

to a Government widen protects and feeds Mm, 
when through her salaries he lives. The trespass 
is not in thinking as he does, but in continuing 
to use the money and honors of the Church, to 
multiply his strength with which to desolate the 
Church. 

I have presented these points, simply to get 
at the real nature of the work before us, so far 
as it is related to its Right Reverend author. I 
. am aware that his personal character does not 
enter into the calculation, and I have presented 
these statements of fact simply to exclude from 
the discussion any unfair difference to his views 
on account of his position. 

The argument under (3) is introduced there 
because the assertion at which it is aimed does 
not properly belong to Colenso's argument at all, 
and is thrown in by him to leave him still in the 
fold of faith. He wishes to be heard as a saint 
and a martyr, and I think it more honest to hear 
him in his true character. Not till a thorough 
examination of the work, and a careful weighing 



41 



of the argument proved to my own mind, at least, 
that the Pentateuch is historical, have I ventured 
to present Colenso's character so nakedly. If 
the argument for the points does not sustain the 
positions, I am willing to bear the charge of un- 
charitableness. 



42 



CHAPTEK III. 

THE BEARINGS OF COLENSO'S VIEWS UPON THE 
NEW TESTAMENT. 

Such is the relation existing between the \ 
Pentateuch and the New Testament, that every 
thoughtful man feels that they must either, stand 
or fall together. Colenso says that some simple, 
faithful, believing souls will be pained, because 
they regard the two Testaments as inseparable ; 
and he consoles them, or tries to let their faith 
down easily to infidelity, by simply afiirming 
that " it is not so." To this I would beg leave 
modestly to answer, that "it is so." Now the 
argument is even ; so let us look at the evidences 
of this : 

Take away the Pentateuch, and Christ is sim- 
ply jutted into the world without any relations 
to it. He is in just the wrong place. If the 
story contained in the Pentateuch is not true, 



BEAUINGS OF COLENSO's VIEWS. 43 

the whole system of Judaism falls into ruin, and 
every system growing out of it, and dependent 
upon it as a basis, must also fall. If there was 
no night of the Passover, what was the meaning 
of the Paschal Lamb? If it had no meaning, 
how could it acquire any meaning by being 
transferred to Jesus? What could the great 
sacrifice mean to a people who had never felt 
the need of a sacrifice? To him who studies 
the slow process by which new and foreign ideas 
acquire force, there is an imperative necessity for 
long-continued processes of education. If there 
had been no Law, no schoolmaster to lead the race 
to Christ, they never could have come to him. 
Take away the first, and you utterly defeat the 
second. The great idea of the Gospel is not a 
native of this world — it came from the worlds 
above us ; and, as a consequence, it required long 
training, fifteen hundred years of hard schooling, 
to give any meaning to the word mercy. 

There is another law in the nature of things 
which makes the order established in the Bible 



44 COLENSO'S FALLACIES. 

indispensable. There comes always training be- 
fore skill, obedience before power to govern, 
submission before dominion, the restraints of 
childhood before the liberty of manhood, the 
Law before the Gospel, Moses before Christ. 
The Mosaic dispensation might, perhaps, have 
been supplanted by some other equivalent sys- 
tem. But either that or its equal must neces- 
sarily have preceded the Christian dispensation. 
So that, looked at simply in the light of reason, 
the destruction of the first is the inevitable de- 
struction of the other. If Colenso can show 
that the harvest is in no way related to the sow- 
ing, then he can, perhaps, show that the New 
Testament is in no way related to the Penta- 
teuch. 

But there is still another class of evidence 
showing this inseparable connection between 
Moses and Christ. It is this : Christ and the 
apostles defended and established the Messiah- 
ship of Jesus by appeals to Moses. When Jesus 
appeared to Cleopas and his companions, as they 



BEARINGS OF COLENSO'S VIEWS. 45 

journeyed from Jerusalem to Emmaus, he re- 
proached them with their lack of faith, and sus- 
tained his charge by appeals to the Old Testa- 
ment: "And beginning at Moses, and all the 
prophets, he expounded unto them in all the 
Scriptures the things concerning himself." (Luke 
xxiv, 27.) Again, we read: "For had ye be- 
lieved Moses, ye would have believed me : for 
lie wrote of me. But if ye believe not his writ- 
ings, how shall ye believe my words?" (John 
v, 46, 47.) Jesus declares that a belief in Moses 
and in Moses' writings was essential to a belief 
in himself, and states the proposition doubly. If 
they believed one they would believe the other; 
and if they did not believe the one they could not 
believe the other. One would think that this sin- 
gle passage would have convinced even Colenso 
that, to destroy our faith in Moses would neces- 
sarily destroy our faith in Christ. One might 
almost think that Paul, the great missionary 
Bishop, had in his mind's eye this modern mis- 
sionary Bishop, when he wrote, "But even unto 



46 COLENSO'S FALLACIES. 

this day, when Moses is read the vail is upon 
their heart." Yet even Colenso needs not de- 
spair, for, "nevertheless, when it shall turn to 
the Lord, the vail shall be taken away." 

Again we read, (Acts xxviii, 23,) when Paul 
was at Rome, "And when they had appointed 
him a day, there came many to him into his lodg- 
ing, to whom he expounded and testified [sus- 
tained by evidence] the kingdom of God, per- 
suading them concerning Jesus, both out of the 
laiv of Moses, and out of the prophets, from 
morning till evening." Again, (Hebrews hi, 5 :) 
" And Moses verily was faithful in all his house, 
as a servant, for a testimony of those things which 
were to he spoken after." Colenso says Moses 
was not faithful; Paul says Moses was faithful. 
Whom will ye believe? If ye believe Colenso, 
you not only destroy the ground of trust in 
Christ, but also the veracity of Paul. 

And Peter says of Moses, (Acts hi, 21, 22,) 
"Which God hath spoken by the mouth of all 
his holy prophets, since the world began. For 



BEARING OF COLENSO'S VIEWS. 47 

Moses truly said unto the fathers, A Prophet 
shall the Lord your God raise up unto you," 
etc. Peter, under the inspiration of the Pente- 
costal baptism, said Moses, as one of God's holy 
prophets, " spake truly !" What will Colenso-do 
with Peter ? Surely he furnishes an example of 
wonderful credulity — believing a Zulu native 
rather than Christ, and Paul, and Peter! He 
does feel the embarrassment of the Savior's faith 
in Moses, and attempts to charge that faith 
to ignorance. The argument amounts to this : 
Though Christ at twelve years of age was more 
than equal to the doctors in the Temple, yet 
even after his resurrection (Acts xxiv, 27) he 
could not be supposed to know as much about 
Moses as the Bishop of Natal. 

Here is his argument, (pp. 30, 31, and 32 ;) I 
will give it in full : 

" On one point, however, it may be well to 
make here a few observations. There may be 
some who will say that such words as those in 
John v, 46, 47, 'For had ye believed Moses, 



48 COLENSO'S FALLACIES. 

ye would have believed me : for he wrote of me. 
But if ye believe not his writings, how shall ye 
believe my words?' or in Luke xx, 37 — 'Now 
that the dead are raised, even Moses shewed at 
the bush, [that is, in the passage about the 
' bush,'] when he called the Lord the God of 
Abraham, and the God of Isaac, and the God 
of Jacob ;' or in Luke xvi, 29 — l They have 
3Ioses and the prophets ; let them hear them,' 
and v. 31, c If they hear not Moses and the 
prophets, neither will they be persuaded, though 
one rose from the dead,' — are at once decisive 
upon the point of Moses' authorship of the Pen- 
tateuch, since they imply that our Lord himself 
believed in it, and, consequently, to assert that 
Moses did not write these books, would be to 
contradict the words of Christ, and to impugn 
his veracity. 

" To make use of such an argument is, indeed, 
to bring the sacred ark itself into the battle- 
field, and to make belief in Christianity itself 
depend entirely upon the question whether Moses 



49 



wrote the Pentateuch or not. There is, how- 
ever, no force in this particular objection, as will 
appear from the following considerations : 

" (1.) First, such words as the above, if under- 
stood in their most literal sense, can only be 
supposed, at all events, to apply to certain parts 
of the Pentateuch ; since most devout Christians 
will admit that the last chapter of Deuteronomy, 
which records the death of Moses, could not have 
been written by his hand, and the most ortho- 
dox commentators are obliged also to concede 
the probability of some other interpolations hav- 
ing been made in the original story. It would 
become, therefore, even thus, a question for a 
reverent criticism to determine what passages 
give signs of not having been written by Moses. 

" (2.) But, secondly, and more generally, it 
may be said that, in making use of such expres- 
sions, our Lord did but accommodate his words 
to the current popular language of the day, as 
when he speaks of God ' making his sun to rise/ 
(Matt, v, 45,) or of the ' stars falling from heav- 

4 



50 



en,' (Matt, xxiv, 29,) or of Lazarus being ' car- 
ried by the angels into Abraham's bosom,' 
(Luke xvi, 22,) or of the woman ' with a spirit 
of infirmity,' whom ' Satan had bound eighteen 
years,' (Luke xiii, 16, etc.,) without our being at 
all authorized in drawing from them scientific 
or psychological conclusions. 

" (3.) Lastly, it is perfectly consistent with 
the most entire and sincere belief in our Lord's 
divinity, to hold, as many do, that when he 
vouchsafed to become a ' son of man,' he took 
our nature fully, and voluntarily entered into all 
the conditions of humanity, and, among others, 
into that which makes our growth in all ordinary 
knowledge gradual and limited. We are ex- 
pressly told in Luke ii, 52, that Jesus increased 
in wisdom, as well as in stature. It is not sup- 
posed that in his human nature he was acquaint- 
ed, more than any educated Jew of the age, 
with the mysteries of all modern sciences ; nor, 
with St. Luke's expressions before us, can it be 
seriously maintained that, as an infant, or young 



BEARING OF COLENSO'S VIEWS. 51 

child, he possessed a knowledge surpassing that 
of the most pious and learned adults of his na- 
tion upon the subject of the authorship and age 
of the different portions of the Pentateuch. At 
what period, then, of his life upon earth is it to 
be supposed that he had granted to him as the 
Son of man super naturally full and accurate in- 
formation on these points, so that he should be 
expected to speak about the Pentateuch in other 
terms than any other devout Jew of that day 
would have employed ? Why should it be thought 
that he would speak with certain Divine knowl- 
edge on this matter, more than upon other mat- 
ters of ordinary science or history?" 

Colenso fairly states the argument, and then 
attempts to answer it. Let us look at his rea- 
soning. In the first place he attempts to drive 
us from the true issue by saying, " To make use 
of such an argument is, indeed, to bring the sa- 
cred ark itself into the battle-field, and to make 
a belief in Christianity itself depend entirely 
upon the question whether Moses wrote the 



52 COLENSO'S FALLACIES. 

Pentateuch or not?" Let us pass over his cu- 
rious temerity concerning "the sacred ark/' 
though he is trying to shatter it into a thou- 
sand pieces, with his mathematical siege guns, 
and see if this exposure of the sacred ark is not 
just the thing that Christ thrusts upon those 
■who reject Moses. (John v, 46, 47 :) " Had ye 
believed Hoses, ye would have believed one. 
But if ye believe not his writings, how shall 
ye believe my words f I leave the issue, be- 
tween Christ and Colenso. 

His first answer is this — that these words im- 
ply only a belief that Moses wrote certain farts 
of the Pentateuch, and can not refer to all of 
it. Devout criticism will admit that the last 
chapter of Deuteronomy, and a few passages 
supposed to be interpolated, were not written by 
Moses ; therefore, he concludes there is no con- 
flict between Christ and Colenso. Here, by 
" certain parts" he introduces the fallacy of am- 
higuous middle; for Chris t assures the truth- 
fulness of Moses in all the essential parts ; that 



53 



is, in the story out of which Judaism sprang, 
and without which Judaism would have been 
impossible. But Colenso aims his argument at 
this very story, and, in this argument, dodges 
the true issue because he finds one chapter, and 
that not claiming to be written by Moses — but 
appropriately appended to his work — one chap- 
ter out of 187 that Moses did not write. Is this 
logic worthy of a man who claims to know more 
than all who have lived before him? In this 
volume Colenso says, (p. 53,) "We have no al- 
ternative but to conclude that the main por- 
tions of the story of the Exodus are certainly 
not to be regarded as historically true" And in 
his Second Part he labors to show that Moses 
wrote but little, if any, of the story. Is this in 
keeping with the view which the Jews held of 
Moses and the Pentateuch, which Christ also 
affirmed and established? Christ does not say 
if ye believe not minor parts of Moses' writings, 
but if ye believe not his writings. Colenso's fal- 
lacy is too bold to need further comment. 



54 COLENSO'S FALLACIES^ 

The second grand argument is that Christ did 
hut accommodate his words to the popular lan- 
guage. Why did not Colenso think of this 
when he was quibbling about " God's calling 
the Israelites to meet at the door of the taber- 
nacle?" It would not serve him there. Here, 
as applied, it means simply this: the story of 
the Pentateuch is false ; and yet Christ, who was 
the Truth itself, indorsed that story. Moses did 
not write it ; yet Christ says he did. This is 
simply accommodating his words to popular lan- 
guage. 0, blasphemy! didst thou ever wear a 
milder form? 

Feeling that this is too bold, Colenso comes 
up on the other side, claiming that Christ did 
not know any better. But the disciples said, 
" Now we are sure that thou knowest all things," 
and after this, and after his resurrection, Jesus 
reaffirms the authority of Moses. (Luke xxiv, 
27.) The charge of ignorance fares no better 
in the light of the Scriptures than does the 
charge of falsehood. There remains no escape. 



BEARING OF COLENSO'S VIEWS. 55 

If the Pentateuch falls, the whole plan of re- 
demption fails, Christ is an impostor, and we are 
left orphaned in the world, with no hope but 



50 COLENSO'S FALLACIES. 



CHAPTEE IY. 

THE REAL QUESTION BEFORE US. 

The truth and inspiration of the Pentateuch 
is not a question to be decided by a balance of 
probabilities ; but, so far forth as Colenso's book 
is concerned, it is a question of possibilities. 
Probabilities may go far to confirm it, but can 
have no weight against it. If it is consistent 
throughout, that creates a strong probability of 
its truth. If it is contradictory and impossible 
in itself, that is demonstration that it is not true. 
And any sufficient evidence that it is impossible 
to be true, removes it from any claim to inspira- 
tion, or to Divine authority. The question is not 
one of probabilities, but one of possibilities. Un- 
derstand this clearly. An objection, to be valid, 
that is, proving the Pentateuch false, must con- 
tain an impossibility. Otherwise it may be 



THE REAL QUESTION BEFORE US. 57 

true, that is, it is possibly true, and through that 
possibility Christ may lead humanity up to God. 
Colenso admits this, as every man whose common- 
sense gives him a right to reason must admit, 
(page 52,) where he condemns the Pentateuch 
on account of the " many absolute impossibilities 
involved." 

What we have to do, then, is to take the Pen- 
tateuch as it is, with its genealogies and its 
figures, and show that they do not involve any 
imj 

To concede that there is required a new con- 
struction of the Hebrew numerals, is to concede 
that as it now stands it is not true. This, I 
think, is the point at issue. If there existed 
such a demand I think the collateral evidence 
is sufficient to justify the belief that it would be 
met, so that all the essentials of salvation would 
remain ; but from a careful study of the figures, 
as they are, there appears to be no such demand. 
Occasional error may appear from the careless- 
ness of transcribers, but this could not run 



58 COLENSO'S FALLACIES. 

through the entire story. I accept what is 
termed "the higher numbers," that is, the ac- 
count as it is, for the following reasons : 1. 
They are so clearly stated and so often re- 
peated. 2. The purpose for which they were 
taken required exactness. 3. The accuracy of 
the multiplications and additions, the sum equal- 
ing all the parts, while from all the figuring of 
Herodotus there are but one or two correct 
results where the numbers were high. 4. Only 
these large numbers, or larger ones, would verify 
the story. 5. As we shall see, they involved 
no impossibility. 

Let this be remembered, that the Pentateuch 
is the oldest book extant, was prepared among 
an ignorant, bigoted people, and is the history 
of a nation for twenty-five centuries, though not 
more than one-fourth the size of the account of 
one man's " travels in Africa " for half that many 
years. Consequently, whole centuries are to be 
summed up in a few paragraphs. Omissions 
there must be. Many results would necessarily 



THE REAL QUESTION BEFORE US. 59 

be noticed, whose causes are left unnoticed. In- 
deed, if it were otherwise, and all the biogra- 
phies were given, it would be a hundred-fold 
larger than the Cyclopedia Britannica. All the 
argument requires is this, that it contains no im- 



In this review, which shall he all that it claims 
to he, reader, you must not expect strokes of 
rhetoric or nights of fancy. You will find only 
the conclusions of a plain matter-of-fact dis- 
cussion of a plain matter-of-fact subject, and 
you are invited to scrutinize the evidence and 
sift the logic. If the seeming or manufactured 
difficulties are removed, reject them. If not, 
wait patiently till some thinker and scholar has 
combated- them. This fix in your faith, that 
* God's Word will stand — the mountains may flee 
away, but not one jot or one tittle of God's Word 
shall fail. His truth is not an infant cradled in 
the lap of human credulity, but it is a giant 
leaping out of heaven into the world, full armed, 
demanding universal submission. For one, I 



60 



have not attached myself to the truth to con- 
ceal its weaknesses, to patch up its wounds, to 
cover its retreat, or to give it a decent burial, 
but I have attached myself to the truth to save 
my soul, to be carried in its strong arms through 
this world, error, and conflict up to God. 



THE QUESTION OF INSPIRATION. 61 



CHAPTEE Y. 

THE QUESTION OP INSPIRATION. 

" All Scripture is given by inspiration of God, 
and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for cor- 
rection, for instruction in righteousness; that the 
man of Grod may be perfect, thoroughly fur- 
nished unto all good works" (2 Tim. hi, 16, 17.) 
This is the teaching of the book itself, and con- 
tains the belief of Christians on this subject. 
To demand any thing more than this, and then 
to condemn the whole book because it does not 
furnish it, -is to create a false issue. It is sim- 
ply fighting a man of straw. 

It claims to be profitable "for instruction in 
righteousness." , Colenso, overlooking this point, 
demands that the book shall teach him all sciences 
in scientific language, which it does not do, and 
from the nature of the case could not do. Lan- 



62 COLENSO'S FALLACIES. 

guage is not permanent It advances or de- 
clines as the people speaking it advance or 
decline. Words that were the chief stock in 
conversation of one age, fall into disuse, and 
drop out of the language. New words come in 
to represent the new ideas of the people. Till 
Colenso can demonstrate two things — first, that 
language was perfect in the beginning, and, 
second, that mind never varies in its develop- 
ment — he has no right to expect any book to 
be written in the peculiar style of all ages. 
Before it could incorporate the technical terms 
of any science it would require a people ac- 
quainted with that science. But as the Bible 
has to do with righteousness and not with science, 
it is to be measured by the demand on that basis. 
If its inspiration meets that demand, we are to 
receive it as inspired, though it does not deal 
with the abstract terms which are always addi- 
tions to a language. 

Though it comes ekom a Perfect Mind, the 
All-Knowing One, and has therefore the ma- 



THE QUESTION OP INSPIRATION. 63 

terials enabling it to make perfect revelations of 
truth, yet it comes to poor, little, finite minds, 
which can not receive many deep things, and 
which, consequently, limit the revelation of the 
truth; and it comes through the media of the 
stammering, haltering jargons of this world, 
which can receive into their broken sentences 
but little of those wonderful truths which fill 
and overflow the language of God and heaven. 

Missionaries say that one of the most difficult 
things to overcome in translating from a nobler 
into a meaner language, is to find words which 
will express the ideas of the first in the second. 
If there is that difficulty between the English 
and the Fiji, what must it be between the Divine 
and the human ? As a consequence, many truths 
are only partially revealed — many are only so 
much revealed that they need the light of other 
truths, and the expositions of ages, to bring 
them out into shape. A castle on the side of a 
mountain, seen in the dim twilight, appears only 
as a shapeless shadow, deepening the darkness 



64 COLEXSO'S FALLACIES. 

behind it. But as the day advances it conies 
out clearer and more distinct, till at last the 
risen sun, reflected from polished shaft, and tur- 
ret, and dome, reveals a masterpiece of archi- 
tecture with carved work and fretted cornice. 
To deny its beauty, and declare that it never 
came from the hand of an architect, when the 
broad daylight is demonstrating the beauty of 
the conception and the skill of the execution, 
because the darkness obscured its proportions 
and perfection in the early twilight, would be to 
exhibit the folly and unfairness of the critic. 

So, now, in the meridian splendor of a per- 
fected revelation, to condemn as false the entire 
system of inspiration, because, when the race 
was in the twilight of its knowledge, God's rev- 
elation was not entire — that is, did not bring out 
every part of all its truths — is an error no more 
excusable. 

God might have so inspired his prophets and 
teachers that they could have declared the most 
subtile truths of science, and the most abstract 



THE QUESTION OF INSPIRATION. 65 

deductions concerning his mysterious nature, 
but such a revelation would have been self-de- 
feating. The men to whom it was declared 
would have known no more about it after the 
utterances than they did before. Colenso might 
have stood up in the streets of Pietermaritzburg, 
the capital of Natal, and declared, in the most 
approved English, that " God so loved the world 
that he gave his only-begotten Son, that whoso- 
ever believeth in him should not perish, but 
have everlasting life," and the Zulus might have 
thought the sounds flowed off pleasantly, but 
they would not have received the truth. Before 
they could understand the truth Colenso must 
translate it into their language. So God might 
have declared his wonderful truths in full, might 
have pronounced all their hidden relations as 
they stood out in his own thought, but that 
would not have made Adam, or Moses, or Bacon, 
or Colenso any wiser. The truth must be trans- 
lated, and then these worthies could understand 
some of it. This is just what God has been 



m 



doing. He revealed his will as rapidly as the 
race could receive it, till, "in the fullness of 
time," he completed the revelation in the person 
of Jesus of Nazareth. 



COLBNSO'S "INTRODUCTORY REMARKS." 67 



CHAPTER VI. 

DIFFICULTIES IN COLENSO'S "INTRODUCTORY 
REMARKS." 

The first mentioned, in a list of others, is the 
account of the creation. Though no argument 
is presented to support a difficulty at this point, 
and though the difficulty itself is not even stated, 
yet a few words may not be amiss here. The 
whole catalogue given (pages 49 and 50) is not 
sustained in the least, and seems to be thrown 
in just to create a suspicion against the Bible in 
a field where argument can not be brought 
against it. It reminds one of the pious slander 
which some people, too conscientious to put a 
falsehood about a neighbor into words, and yet 
wishing to darken the neighbor's character, start 
on its mission of wrong by significant nods and 
knowing looks. 




68 COLENSO'S FALLACIES. 

I will give only a few facts presented by ge 
ology, supporting the account given in Genesis. 

quote from one of our ablest geologists — Ed- 
ward Hitchcock, D. D., LL. D. 

1. The Scriptures and geology agree in not 
fixing the time of the creation of the world. 

2. They do fix the time when man appeared. 

3. They represent creation as the work of God. 

4. They represent instrumentalities as em- 
ployed in the work of creation. 

5. They represent creation to be a progressive 
work, completed by successive exhibitions of Di- 
vine power, with intervals of repose. 

6. They represent the continents as covered 
an indefinite period by the ocean, and subse- 
quently elevated above it. 

7. They give the earth a very early revolu- 
tion on its axis. 

8. Genesis allows us to suppose an indefinite 
period between " the beginning " and the first day. 

9. We may understand the days as symbolic- 
ally representing indefinite periods. 




COLENSO'S "INTRODUCTORY REMARKS." 69 

10. Genesis may be regarded as a succession 
of pictures with existing nature on the fore- 
ground, not representing all the changes, but the 
most prominent scenes in creation. 

11. Genesis could not give the true chrono- 
logical order of events, taking existing nature as 
the foreground, because often the same class is 
several times repeated. 

12. Genesis and geology represent physical 
evil as in the world before man. 

It is sufficient to know that the ablest geolo- 
gists clearly show the perfect agreement between 
Genesis and geology. 

Th e second difficulty presented by Colenso 
i s the Deluge. In his Preface, p. 6: "While 
translating - the story of the Flood a simple- 
minded native asked me, 'Is all that true?' . . . 
I dared not say so. My own knowledge of ge- 
ology had been much increased since I left En- 
gland, and I now know for certain, on geological 
grounds, a fact of which I had only had misgiv- 
ings before ; namely, that a universal deluge, 



70 COLENSO'S FALLACIES. 

such as the Bible manifestly speaks of, could 
not possibly have taken place in the way de- 
scribed in the Book of Genesis. I refer es- 
pecially to the circumstance, well known to all 
geologists, that volcanic hills exist of immense 
extent in Auvergne and Languedoc, which must 
have been formed ages before the Noachian 
Deluge, and which are covered with light and 
loose substances, that must have been swept 
away by a flood, but do not exhibit the slightest 
sign of having ever been so disturbed.' 5 

I would simply ask where the must have been 
swept away comes from ? That they might have 
been sivept away we can easily see, but not that 
they must. Till this is fixed this objection is 
powerless. 

He adds that " some have attempted to show 
that Noah's Deluge was only a partial one. But 
such attempts have ever seemed to me to be 
made in the very teeth of Scripture statements. 
Nor is any thing gained by it. For as waters 
must find their level on the earth's surface, 



71 

without a special miracle, of which the Bible 
says nothing, a flood which should begin by 
covering the top of Ararat, must necessarily be- 
come universal." 

In the first place he assumes that the Elood 
was not a miracle. Could not God cause the 
water to overflow one territory and restrain it 
from other territories, as easily as he could move 
it one inch from its accustomed bed ? Who 
shall prescribe limits to the exercise of omnipo- 
tence ? 

Another unwarrantable assumption is this : 
that God could not cause the depression of a 
continent. Geology says he not only can, but 
absolutely has done so. 

Another- unwarrantable assumption is this : 
that the Bible necessarily teaches a universal 
Flood. We do find that in many places uni- 
versal terms are used where only a part is 
meant. (See Gen. xli, 57.) " And all countries 
came into Egypt to Joseph, for to buy corn, be- 
cause the famine was so sore in all lands." We 



72 COLENSO'S FALLACIES. 

do not for a moment think that it is intended 
here that all the people of Europe, and Asia, 
and Africa, to say nothing of America, which 
may have been inhabited, went to Egypt to buy 
corn. Yet the expression, taken literally, is as 
plain as it can be that all countries came from 
all lands. This is more positive in its univer- 
sality than any expression in reference to the 
Flood. If one is admitted to be used for a part 
or for many, why not the other also ? 

Again, (Exodus ix, 25:) "And the hail 
smote throughout all the land of Egypt all that 
was in the field, both man and beast, and the 
hail smote every herb of the field, and brake 
every tree of the field." But at x, 15, we read 
that the locusts " did eat every herb of the land 
and all the fruit of the trees which the hail had 
left." Here is a positive limitation to a gen- 
eral term. Why are we compelled to stretch 
less general terms in reference to the Flood? 
Again, (Acts ii, 5 :) " And there were dwelling 
at Jerusalem Jews, devout men, out of every 



COLENSO'S "INTRODUCTORY REMARKS." 73 

nation under heaven." Yet in the list that fol- 
lows the world is not summed up. Verse 10 
says, " And in the parts of Lybia about Cyrene" 
clearly leaving other parts of Lybia out of the 
account. Why take this same expression and 
stretch it over all the world, in the case of the 
Flood, and not so extend it here ? Once more, 
(Col. i, 23,) speaking of the Gospel, " which was 
preached to every creature which is under 
heaven." I will not multiply passages. It 
must be clear that the Scriptures do not neces- 
sarily teach a universal deluge. There was no 
demand for a flood to reach further than over 
the then inhabited portions of the world; and it 
is not Xxod's plan to expend power vainly or 
foolishly. " If Colenso had brought to his aid 
honest interpretation, and a fair amount of 
knowledge, he need not have been drowned out 

by the Zulu 's question s. -. 

Another difficulty Colens o gathers from group- 
ing together a number of miracles ; namely. Thf> 
sun and moon standing still ; the waters of the 



74 COLENSO'S FALLACIES. 

River Jordan standing in heaps as solid walls, 
while the stream we must suppose was still run- 
ning — why must we suppose it ? — the ass speak- 
ing with human voice, etc. 



The question here raised is simply one of the 
possibility of miracles/" - To put it lairly : ~Can 
He who created and constantly keeps in motion 
the world control its laws ? I can lift my hand, 
which is contrary to Nature's great law of grav- 
ity. Now, can God do what I can, work in 
spite of a natural law? I can communicate my 
ideas. Can God do the same ? — can he tell man 
what he wishes to communicate ? Rightly looked 
at the question of miracles is very simple and 
very short. The Bishop seems to feel this ; 
for he says, (page 51 :) " I could believe and 
receive the miracles of Scripture heartily, if 
only they were authenticated by a veracious 
history." If, then, he could believe and receive 
miracles, authenticated by veracious history, it 
is neither logical nor fair to bring forward mira- 
cles as evidence that the history is not veracious. 



COLENSO'S " INTRODUCTORY REMARKS." 75 

The size of the miracles can not come into the 
account, because in the hands of God all bodies 
are equally light. It is no more difficult to 
arrest the world on its axis, and all systems with 
it if need be, than to put the world on its axis 
in the first place, and start the universe in its 
thousand motions. All Colenso's doubts and 
darkness about miracles is but an unfair storm 
of dust, stirred up to blind his unsuspecting 
readers, and cover their eyes while he leads 
them into the camp of their enemies. 

If Colenso will stand by the tomb at Bethany, 
and see Jesus, by the mere utterance of a few 
words, call up one from the iron kingdom of 
death, upon whose body corruption had been 
feasting for four days, and then remember that 
the same God who raised Lazarus undertook the 
deliverance of the Hebrews from Egypt, he will 
not find it difficult to believe that the waters of 
the Red Sea obeyed the command of the Al- 
mighty. Where God interposes a miracle, rea- 



76 COLENSO S FALLACIES. 

A nother point w hich greatly "ptraliiftH" fio- 

lenso's faith in the historical veracity of the 
Pentateuch was the commands concerning slav- 
ery. Read what he says, (pp. 50 and 51 :) 

" ' If the master [of a Hebrew servant] have 
given him a wife, and she have borne him sons 
and daughters, the ivife and her children shall be 
her master's, and he shall go out free by himself,' 
(Ex. xxi, 4,) the wife and children in such a case 
being placed under the protection of such other 
words as these: 'If a man smite his servant, or 
his maid, with a rod, and he die under his hand, 
he shall be surely punished. Notwithstanding, 
if he continue a day or two, he shall not be 
punished : for he is his money' (Ex. xxi, 21 i _22.) 

"I shall never forget the revulsion of feel- 
ing with which a very intelligent Christian na- 
tive, with whose help I was translating these 
words into the Zulu tongue, first heard them as 
words said to be uttered by the same Great and 
Gracious Being whom I was teaching him to 
trust in and adore. His whole soul revolted 



\ 



COLENSO'S " INTRODUCTOBY REMARKS." 77 

against the notion, that the Great and Blessed 
God, the Merciful Father of all mankind, would 
speak of a servant or maid as mere 'money,' 
and allow a horrible crime to go unpunished, 
because the victim of the brutal usage had sur- 
vived a few hours. My own heart and con- 
science at the time fully sympathized with his. 
But I then clung to the notion, that the main 
substance of the narrative was historically true. 
And I relieved his difficulty and my own for the 
present by telling him that I supposed that such 
words as these were written down by Moses, and 
believed by him to have been divinely given to 
him, because the thought of them arose in his 
heart, as he conceived, by the inspiration of 
God, and that hence to all such laws he prefixed 
the formula, ' Jehovah said unto Moses, 7 without 
it being on that account necessary for us to sup- 
pose that they were actually spoken by the Al- 
mighty. This was, however, a very great strain 
upon the cord, which bound me to the ordinary 
belief in the historical veracity of the Penta- 



78 COLENSO'S FALLACIES. 

teucli; and since then that cord has snapped in 
twain altogether." 

Here are two or three points worthy of no- 
tice, and worthy of Bishop Colenso : 1. God 
does not call a servant or maid "mere" money. 
A man's wife or daughter may be his cook, 
and still not be a " mere " cook. 2. His exposi- 
tion to the native is most shallow. If Moses 
had strength of mind enough to make him leader 
of that immense multitude, he certainly must 
have known enough to distinguish between what 
he thought himself and what the Lord told him. 
3. Colenso ought to have known that the new 
law for servants was very much milder and bet- 
ter than any law that class had ever had be- 
fore. Instead of being so terrible it was really 
a great reform. 

The race was, comparatively, in its infancy. 
It could not be led in a week, or a year, or 
a generation, up to the summit of moral devel- 
opment. It would be just as reasonable to 
condemn the mother for cooing and prattling 



79 



her heart's story into her infant's ear and soul, 
rather than talk to it of the infinite, the ab- 
solute, and the unconditioned, as it is to con- 
demn God's mode of teaching humanity. A 
simple statement of the truth as it is would 
have saved Colenso from his foolish quibble, 
and left the Word of God in the native's mind 
with full force, undimmed by doubt. Dishonesty 
always darkens counsel. 



80 COLENSO'S FALLACIES. 



CHAPTER VII. 

THE FAMILY OF JUDAH. 

After running the changes on a few objec- 
tions which he does not even state, and does 
not attempt to sustain, giving them the color of 
his broad assumption, that his argument in the 
body of the work has utterly annihilated even 
the possibility of the Pentateuch's being true, 
Colenso at last, after spending more than one- 
fourth of his book in preparatory assumptions, 
enters upon his holy calling at page 60, with a 
chapter entitled " The Family of Judah." 

Here is his argument: 

" Now Judah was forty-two years old, accord- 
ing to the story, when he went down with Jacob 
into Egypt. But, if we turn to Gen. xxxviii, 
we shall find that in the course of these forty- 



THE FAMILY OF JUDAH. 81 

two years of Judah' s life, the following events 
are recorded to have happened. 

" (1.) Judah grows up, marries a wife — ' at tha.t 
time/ (v. 1,) that is, after Joseph's being sold 
into Egypt, when he was ' seventeen years old,' 
(Gen. xxxvii, 2,) and when Judah, consequently, 
was twenty years old — and has, separately, three 
sons by her. 

" (2.) The eldest of these three sons grows up, 
is married, and dies. 

"The second grows up — suppose in another 
year — marries his brother's widow, and dies. 

" The third grows to maturity — suppose in an- 
other year still — but declines to take his broth- 
er's widow to wife. 

"She then deceives Judah himself, conceives 
by him, and in due time bears him twins, Pharez 
and Zarah. 

"(3.) One of these twins also grows to ma- 
turity, and has two sons, Hezron and Hamul, 
born to him, before Jacob goes down into 
Egypt." 



82 COLENSO'S FALLACIES. 

From this Colenso concludes that either the 
account in Exodus of Jacob's family, or the 
account in Genesis of Judah's life, must be 
false. And consequently the Pentateuch is un- 
historical. 

Let us examine the premises and the conclu- 
sion before we charge deception upon Christ, 
who appealed so often to Moses. 

In the first place, Judah was forty-five, and 
may have been forty-six years old, instead of 
forty -two, when Jacob ivent doivn into Egypt 
For, "according to the story," Judah was the 
fourth son from one wife of Jacob's double 
marriage, (Gren. xxix,) which may have been at 
the beginning of the fourth year, instead of at 
the end, and Joseph was born at the end of the 
seventh year; so that Judah may have been four 
years older than Joseph. Joseph was thirty 
when he stood before Pharaoh. Allowing noth- 
ing for the time that may have elapsed between 
Joseph's interpretation of Pharaoh's dreams and 
the commencement of the years of plenty, there 



THE FAMILY OF JUDAH. 83 

were nine years more before Judah stood before 
Joseph, and then, as Colenso admits, (page 70,) 
nearly two years more were consumed in the 
journeys between Canaan to Egypt, and in be- 
ing starved out the second time. Therefore, 
Joseph may have been forty-one or forty-two, 
consequently Judah forty-five or forty-six. 

Secondly, it is not certain, " from the story," 
that Judah was twenty when he married. 1. The 
reference " at that time," (Gen. xxxviii, 1,) may 
not necessarily refer to the things specified in 
Gen. xxxvii; but, as Ainsworth remarks, may 
more properly refer to some period " soon after 
Jacob's coming to Shechem, (Gen. xxxiii, 18,) 
before the history of Dinah, (Gen. xxxiv.) " Dr. 
Clarke prefers to think "that chap, xxxviii 
originally followed chap, xxxiii, and that it got 
by accident into this place." This view, I think, 
is rendered very probable by the fact that where 
it now stands it is an abrupt introduction of a 
new subject into the midst of Joseph's history ; 
chap, xxxvii ends with Joseph's sale, and chap. 



84 COLENSO'S FALLACIES. 

xxxix, commences where chap, xxxvii leaves off, 
the history of Judah having no connection or re- 
lation to either part. Furthermore, chap, xxxviii 
would naturally follow chap, xxxiii, and he fol- 
lowed by chap, xxxiv, because Dinah's life would 
naturally be given in connection with Judah' s. 
Whatever the original arrangement may have 
been, this is certain to the careful, thoughtful 
reader, that the subject of chap, xxxviii comes 
in between the subjects of chaps, xxxiii and 
xxxiv, and not in the middle of Joseph's his- 
tory. Again, as Bishop Colenso, or any scholar 
such as he claims to be, may see by looking at 
the Hebrew text, that the expression "Baeth- 
hahee," " at that time" (Gen. xxxviii, 1,) is more 
properly translated "in that time," and conse- 
quently Judah's marriage may be located any 
where in the preceding history — after he came 
to Shalem with his father, who there bought a 
piece of land, spread his tent and erected an 
altar, (Gen. xxxiii, 19, 20.) 

We now have forty-five or forty-six years for 



THE FAMILY OF JUDAH. 85 

the accomplishment of the events of Judah's life 
up to the going down into Egypt, and the ques- 
tion is very simple — Was it possible for him to 
have great grandchildren in the time? It must 
be remembered that upon him as well as upon 
all the Israelites rested the especial blessing of 
God in reference to fruitfulness. We must cal- 
culate possibilities under this special blessing, 
and not the ordinary course of things in English 
society. 

A few facts will settle this question. The 
average age of puberty in the Hindoo female is 
thirteen years ; and Mr. Robertson, who is un- 
derwritten by Dr. Carpenter, (Cyclopedia of 
Anatomy and Physiology, vol. iv, pp. 1339, 
1340,) cites cases as young as 8, others at 9, 
and many at 10, etc. The average age of pu- 
berty of the English female is 14 y-| years. 
Robertson also cites cases at 9, and very many 
at 10. The average age of puberty of males 
is a little less than 15, or about the same as 
that of English females. Now, as the term av- 



86 



erage implies, and as the facts with females 
show, we may reasonably expect some cases as 
early as 10 or 11. There is nothing impossible 
about it. But we do not need this. There is 
time enough without it. Now, allowing 2 years, 
all that even Colenso asks, for the maturing of 
Judah's 2d and 3d sons, after the death of the 
1st, and we have left 43 or 44 years for the 
three generations, that is, 14 years and 4> or 8 
months each, the average age of puberty of 
males. 

Is it not clear that Hezron and Hamul may 
have been born in Canaan? and if that is barely 
possible the leading favorite objection of Colenso 
loses its force, and falls utterly worthless. In- 
stead of the thing being impossible, which is 
necessary to make the objection valid, it might 
all have happened inside of thirty-six years ; so 
that we have ten years to spare. That is more 
than time enough for a Zulu native to " out- 
figure" and convert a celebrated mathematical 
bishop. Colenso says that the Pentateuch is 



THE FAMILY OF JUDAH. 87 

unhistorical, because Hezron and Hamul could 
not have been born in the time allowed. If 
they could have been born, then this objection is 
worthless, and the "figures and facts" clearly 
show that Hezron and Hamul could have been 
born in Canaan. Therefore, so far as Judah's 
family is concerned, the Pentateuch remains 
" historical." 

Mahan gives another exposition, conceding 
that Hezron and Hamul were not born in 
Canaan; and as it is a fair meeting of the 
question by a hypothesis, clearly admissible, I 
will give its substance: 

Jacob's family list was made out after the 
descent. The number was seventy, a sacred 
number. - Of these, four had died in Canaan, 
and, therefore, four grandchildren were substi- 
tuted to keep the sacred number good — two for 
Er and Onan, and two for Jacob's two wives, 
which were all Jacob had, though Colenso tries 
to conceal this fact, by speaking of Leah " and 
the other wives of Jacob." There having died 



88 COLENSO'S FALLACIES. 

but four, only four were needed, from all the 
grandchildren which Jacob may have had, to 
complete the list. The above hypothesis is rea- 
sonable, and before it Colenso's objection falls. 



COURT OF THE TABERNACLE. 89 



CHAPTBE VIII. 

THE SIZE OF THE COURT OF T HE TABERNACLE 

COMPARED WITH THE NUMBER OF THE 

CONGREGATION. 



His argument is this : Moses, by the com- 
mand of Jehovah, gathered the congregation to- 
gether unto the door of the tabernacle. By a 
learned calculation, the Bishop figures up a re- 
sult that the court would not contain one one- 
hundredth of the adult males, and, therefore, it 
is inconceivable that the multitude should be 
thus summoned by the command of Almighty 
God, (page 80,) and therefore the Pentateuch is 
unhistorical. 

Bead his summation on page 80 : 

"But how many would the whole court have 
contained? Its area — 60 yards by 30 yards — 
was 1,800 square yards, and the urea of the 
tabernacle itself — 18 yards by 6 yards — was 



90 COLENSO'S FALLACIES. 

108 square yards. Hence the area of the court 
outside the tabernacle was 1,692 square yards. 
But the ' whole congregation ' would have made 
a body of people nearly 20 miles — or, more ac- 
curately, 33,530 yards — long, and 18 feet — or 6 
yards — wide; that is to say, packed closely to- 
gether, they would have covered an area of 
201,180 square yards. In fact, the court, when 
thronged, could only have held 5,000 people; 
whereas the able-bodied men alone exceeded 
600,000. Even the ministering Levites, 'from 
thirty to fifty years old,' were 8,580 in number, 
(Num. iv, 48 ;) only 504 of these could have stood 
within the court in front of the tabernacle, and 
not . two-thirds of them could have entered the 
court, if they had filled it from one end to the 
other. It is inconceivable how, under such cir- 
cumstances, ' all the assembly,' the ' whole 
congregation,' could have been summoned to 
attend ' at the door of the tabernacle,' by the 
express command of Almighty God." 

That the whole congregation could have stood 



COURT OF THE TABERNACLE. 91 

in the court at the same time no body ever 
claimed. The application of the principle of in- 
terpretation insisted on by Colenso, (page 31,) 
"that our Lord conformed to the current, pop- 
ular language of the day," removes the whole 
difficulty. If Christ did, why could not Moses? 
Mark this. The fallacy in the application of 
this principle, at page 31, is this : Christ did 
not adopt merely the language of the day, but 
the ideas, and beliefs, and doctrines of the peo- 
ple. The fallacy in rejecting the application 
here is because Moses did adopt the current, 
popular language and idioms of the day. 

This denial of idioms common to all languages, 
and perfectly understood, is so childish that it is 
difficult to treat it soberly. Let us treat it can- 
didly, and apply his own mathematics, remem- 
bering that some things are so plainly absurd 
that they can not be reasoned against, because 
you can not increase their absurdity. 

It is a law of logic that an argument that 
proves too much is not sound. An infinite 



92 COLENSO'S FALLACIES. 

quantity is a quantity greater than any assign- 
able quantity, and "it is inconceivable" that 
any calculations in which such a quantity is used 
are exact calculations. But such a quantity is 
used in mathematical calculations. Therefore 
"it is inconceivable" that mathematical calcula- 
tions are exact. The Bishop forbids that any 
language should contain symbols of thought not 
exact, and therefore there are no symbols of 
thought not exact, his own mathematical books 
to the contrary. 

Again : Colenso has written a book trying to 
prove that the Pentateuch is not true. But Co- 
lenso is a Bishop of the Church of England, 
and, as such, has given his word of honor be- 
fore God, a most solemn oath, that he does be- 
lieve the Pentateuch is true. Therefore it is 
inconceivable that Colenso ever wrote a book 
trying to prove that the Pentateuch is not true. 

Abraham Lincoln, as President of the United 
States, issued an order that all the people should 
fast one day and pray the blessing of God upon 



COURT OF THE TABERNACLE. 93 

our cause. But not more than one in six ever 
prays. Therefore it is inconceivable that Mr. 
Lincoln ever issued such an order. Such con- 
clusions get their viciousness from the unwar- 
rantable assumptions of their premises. 



94 COLENSO'S FALLACIES. 



CHAPTEE IX. 

MOSES AND JOSHUA ADDRESSING ALL ISRAEL. 

In Chapter V Colenso enters upon a labored 
argument to show that this was impossible. It 
may seem a waste of time and space to criticise 
such an objection ; yet, as it shows the despe- 
rateness of the infidel's case, I will present his 
argument, taken from pages 81 and 83 : 

" ' These be the words which Moses spake 
unto all Israel.' (Deut. i, 1.) 

" ' And Moses called Israel, and said unto 
them.' (Deut. v, i.) 

" c And afterward he read all the words of the 
law, the blessings and the cursings, according 
to all that which is written in the book of the 
law. There was not a word of all that Moses 
commanded, which Joshua read not before all 
the congregation of Israel, with the women, and 



ADDRESSING ALL ISRAEL. 95 

the little ones, and the strangers that were con- 
versant among them. 7 (Josh. viii. 34, 35.) 

"We have just seen that the men in the 
prime of life, ' above twenty years of age,' 
(Num. i, 3,) were more than 600,000 in num- 
ber. We may reckon that the women in the 
prime of life were about as many ; the males 
under twenty years, 300,000 ; the females under 
twenty years, 300,000 ; and the old people, male 
and female together, 200,000, making the whole 
number about two millions. This number, which 
Kurtz adopts, (iii, p. 149,) is, indeed, a very 
moderate estimate. In Home's Introd. iii, p. 
205, they are reckoned to have formed 'an ag- 
gregate of upward of three millions.' 

" How, "then, is it conceivable that a man 
should do what Joshua is here said to have done, 
unless, indeed, the reading of every < word of all 
that Moses commanded,' with l the blessings and 
cursings, according to all that is written in the 
book of the law,' was a mere dumb show, 
without the least idea of those most solemn 



96 



words being heard by those to whom they were 
addressed ? For, surely, no human voice, unless 
strengthened by a miracle of which the Scrip- 
ture tells us nothing, could have reached the 
ears of a crowded mass of people, as large as 
the whole population of London. The very cry- 
ing of the ' little ones,' who are expressly stated 
to have been present, must have sufficed to 
drown the sounds at a few yards' distance." 
\ I agree with Colenso, that no human voice 
could reach all this mass of people. Anj 
notice that the Book does not say it did. yThe 
lexl t[uole(I does not necessitate such an inter- 
pretation. Joshua viii, 33, says that Israel was 
collected on the sides of Mount Grerizim and 
Mount Ebal; and for what purpose? That the 
priests, the Levites, should bless the people of 
Israel. Then v. 34 says, " afterward " he read 
all the words of the law " before all the con- 
gregation of Israel ;" where is the impossibility ? 
It does not say that all heard distinctly, no 
more than it claims that " the little ones " com- 



ADDRESSING ALL ISRAEL. 97 

prehended perfectly. After this public recogni- 
tion and readoption of the law of Moses, how 
easily could it be re-read by the Levites or by 
the elders ! The point urged by Colenso, that 
they could not hear Joshua, is met very simply 
and very easily by a well-known and universally- 
admitted law of interpretation of action — Qui 
facit per alium facit per se — " What one does 
by another he does himself." Therefore on either 
hypothesis, that they did or did not hear, so far 
forth' as Chapter V is concerned, the Pentateuch 
remains historical. 



98 COLENSO S FALLACIES. 



CHAPTER X. 

THE EXTENT OF THE CAMP COMPARED WITH THE 
PRIEST'S DUTIES AND THE DAILY NE- 
CESSITIES OP THE PEOPLE,- - 

Here the argument is in three divisions : 
1. Colenso opens this Chapter VI by quoting 
Levit. iv, 11, 12 : " And the skin of the bullock, 
and all his flesh, with his head, and with his legs, 
and his inwards, and his dung; even the whole 
bullock shall he [the priest] carry forth without 
the camp unto a clean place, where the ashes are 
poured out, and burn him on the wood with fire : 
where the ashes are poured out there shall he be 
burnt." 

Reckoning the population of Israel at the ex- 
odus at two millions, and allowing six feet 
square, or four square yards, for each person, 
he has a camp one and one-half miles across in 



EXTENT OF THE CAMP. \)\) 

each direction, with the tabernacle in the center ; 
therefore, the priest must carry the bullock three- 
fourths of a mile, which he could not do. There- 
fore, " the Pentateuch is unhistorical." 

The answer is very simple, and ought to have 
occurred to Colenso. The Hebrew word hotter, 
translated, "he shall carry forth," is the hyphil 
or causative form of the verb; yatsa, "to go 
out," "to go forth." Being in the hyphil, its 
proper and almost universal translation is to 
cause to go forth — to cause to be done. "Qui 
facit per alium facit per se" 

2. Again, Colenso quotes Deut. xxiii, 12, 14, 
where the people were commanded to "go 
abroad" beyond the camp, which he says the 
sick could not do. Therefore, the "Pentateuch 
is unhistorical." 

I find it a social law that people should "go 
abroad" beyond their houses, but the sick can 
not do this; therefore, it is inconceivable that 
there should be such a law. Never having been 
to Natal, I can not say what the social law is 



100 COLENSO'S FALLACIES. 

there, but I know that such a social law obtains 
in civilized countries. 

A critical examination of the passage shows 
this, that the command to go abroad applied 
only to the warriors, because they were to have 
a " paddle upon their weapons." 

3. Again, the Bishop says they could not get 
fuel at Sinai for a year. This assumes that God 
could not supply them if it were necessary. 
The same objection would prove that London 
could not get fuel. And what would Moscow 
do? Facts are stubborn things. 

So far forth as Chapter VI goes the Penta- 
teuch remains historical. 



THE CENSUS OF THE PEOPLE. 101 



CHAPTEE XI. 

THE NUMBER OF THE PEOPLE AT THE FIRST 

MUSTER, COMPARED WITH THE POLL-TAX 

RAISED SIX MONTHS PREVIOUSLY. 

This is the heading of Colenso's seventh 



chapter. And from their agreement he tries to 
show its unhistorical character. He affirms that 
it is not reasonable that these should agree, and, 
therefore, he concludes that "the Pentateuch is 
unhistorical." 

Not in keeping with his avowed desire for 
truth, he catches at the expression — " Shekel of 
the sanctuary," affirming that it " could hardly 
have been used in this way till there was a sanc- 
tuary in existence, or, rather, till the sanctuary 
had been some time in existence." 

He says that the prose in the Septuagint ver- 
sion, "ro didpayjxov to aytov" is rendered "the sa- 



102 COLENSO'S FALLACIES. 

cred shekel." " But," he adds, " this can hardly 
be the true meaning of the original Besliekel 
haquadesJi ;" I ask, why not? If he will consult 
any standard authority on the Hebrew, he will 
find only this translation. If he had simply 
transcribed correctly the text from Ex. xxx, 13, 
he would have found a definition of "the sacred 
shekel in the verse itself. It reads as follows : 
"This they shall give, every one that passeth 
among them, that are numbered, half a shekel, 
after the shekel of the sanctuary — a shekel is 
twenty gerahs" — etc. Now, a gerah was the 
smallest weight and coin of the Hebrews. (Grese- 
nius.) It signified " a grain or a berry," which 
is proof that it was the simplest and earliest stand- 
ard of calculating exchange. I would simply ask, 
why this omission? and refer to Rev. xxii, 19. 

Let us now look at the facts in reference to 
these two numberings. 

The first reference (Ex. xxx, 11, 13) simply 
says, "When thou takest the sum of the chil- 
dren of Israel," etc. 



CENSUS OF THE PEOPLE. 103 

The second reference (Ex. xxxviii, 25, 26) 
gives the silver of them that were numbered. 

The third reference (Num. i, 46) the result of 
the numbering. 

Now, the question comes, when were these 
numberings taken, on the supposition that there 
were two separate numberings? 

We are told in Ex. xxxviii, 24, the verse pre- 
ceding the account of the silver collected as poll- 
tax, that "all the gold that was occupied — or 
used — for the work in all the work," etc., was 
so much. The conclusion from this is this: 
At this time the tabernacle must have been 
completed, or they would not have known how 
much was fc used ; consequently, the estimate of 
the poll-tax given in the next two verses must 
have been after the completion of the tabernacle. 
We are informed in Ex. xi, 17, that this was 
completed so as to be reared the first day of 
the first month of the second year of their 
escape from Egypt. And from Num. i, 18, 
we learn that "Moses and Aaron numbered the 



104 



children of Israel on the first clay of the second 
month of the second year.'' So that there could 
not have been more than one month between 
these numberings. 

The evidence seems to be largely in favor of 
one numbering actually gone through with among 
the masses of the people, and that at the col- 
lecting of the poll-tax, (1,) this was instituted 
as a matter of life and death with them. It 
was redemption money, that there might be no 
plague among them, (2.) It was accurate, or 
they would not have known the amount col- 
lected, (3.) Again, the numbering ordered in 
Numbers was ordered on the first day of the 
second month, (Num. i, 1,) and the number was 
taken the same day, (Num. i, 18,) and taken 
"by their armies," (Num. i, 3.) A man was 
named from each tribe to assist. This man 
seems to have had the "number of the names" 
of his tribe, and to have reported them. Thus, 
I think, " according to the story," we are led to 
the conclusion that the second census was only 



CENSUS OF THE PEOPLE. 105 

the declaration of the facts ascertained a little 
while before. 

If any doubt this, the fact that not more than 
a month intervened between these enrollments is 
reason enough that they should agree ; and, there- 
fore, so far as Chap. YII is concerned, " the Pen- 
tateuch is historical." 



106 ' COLENSO'S FALLACIES. 



CHAPTER XII. 

THE TENTS AND ARMS OF THE ISRAELITES. 

In Chapters VI II and IX Colenso constructs 
an argument against the Pentateuch, because 
tents and arms are mentioned among the scanty.. 
possessions of the Israelites. Colenso does not 
know where they got their tents and arms, and 
he concludes, therefore, "the Pentateuch is un- 
historical." 

Mahan asks very pertinently, "How does 
Bishop Colenso know that all the Israelites had 
tents ? and how that these tents were made of 
skins?" Let Colenso show the facts before he 
argues from them — " And a hardy, laboring peo- 
ple would very naturally have arms of some 
kind." 



INSTITUTION OF THE PASSOVER. 107 



CHAPTEE XIII. 

'ION OE THE PASSOVER. 



In Chapter X brother Colenso has found a 
good field for the exercise of his -gifts? though at 
the expense of his graces. He heads his chap- 
ter with a quotation from Exodus xii, 21-28 : 
" < Then Moses called for all the elders of Israel, 
and said unto them, Draw out now and take you 
a lamb, according to your families^ and kill the 
2^assover. And ye shall take a bunch of hyssop, 
and dip it in the blood that is in the basin, and 
strike the lintel and the two side-posts with the 
blood that is in the basin : and none of you 
shall go out at the door of his house till the 
morning. . . . And the children of Israel 
went away, and did as the Lord had commanded 
Moses and Aaron, so did they.' That is to say, 



108 



in one single day the whole immense population 
of Israel, as large as that of London, was in- 
structed to keep the Passover, and actually did 
keep it." 

Next follows a statement of what was to be 
done, (pp. 106, 107 :) 

" ' Moses called for all the elders of Israel.' 
We must suppose, then, that the 'elders' lived 
somewhere near at hand. But where did the 
two millions live? And how could the order, to 
keep the Passover, have been conveyed, with its 
minutest particulars, to each individual house- 
hold in this vast community, in one day — rather, 
in tivelve hours, since Moses received the com- 
mand on the very same day on which they were 
to kill the passover at even? (Ex. xii, 6.) 

"It must be observed that it was absolutely 
necessary that the notice should be distinctly 
given to each separate family; for it was a 
matter of life and death. Upon the due per- 
formance of the Divine command it depended 
whether Jehovah should ' stride across.' (j)asach^) 



INSTITUTION OF THE PASSOVER. 109 

the threshold, (see Is. xxxi, 5,) and protect the 
house from the angel of death, or not. And yet 
the whole matter was perfectly new to them. 
The specific directions — about choosing the lamb, 
killing it at even, sprinkling its blood, and eat- 
ing it, with unleavened bread, 'not raw, nor 
sodden at all with water, but roast with fire,' 
' with their loins girded, their shoes on their feet, 
and their staff in their hand' — were now for the 
first time communicated to Moses, by him to the 
elders, and by them to the people. These direc- 
tions, therefore, could not have been conveyed 
by any mere sign, intimating that they were 
now to carry into execution something about 
which they had been informed before. They 
must be plainly and fully delivered to each indi- 
vidual head of a family, or to a number of them 
gathered together; though these, of course, 
might be ordered to assist in spreading the in- 
telligence to others, but so that no single house- 
hold should be left uninformed upon the matter." 
By a learned mathematical calculation, involv- 



110 



ing a knowledge of arithmetic as far as long 
division, he shows, from the number of sheep 
necessary to supply the paschal lambs, that the 
Israelites must have been scattered over "four 
hundred thousand acres — that is, twenty-five 
miles square." And from this he concludes that 
the thing to be done within twelve hours was 
impossible; therefore, "the Pentateuch is unhis- 
torical." 

Now, let us look at the foundation upon which 
this crushing argument rests. Colenso bases it 
on the expression, "this night," claiming that it 
must mean the night following the day on which 
God spoke to Moses and Aaron, and his argu- 
ment rests on the Hebrew demonstrative pro- 
noun Jiazzah, "this." Grant his definition and 
turn to the text, and see what it must refer to. 
In verse third God commands Moses to speak 
unto the children of Israel. The date of this 
conversation may have been the first day of the 
month, and must have been before the tenth. 
Moses was to speak unto Israel, to the end that 



INSTITUTION OF THE PASSOVER. Ill 

they should take a lamb on the tenth day, (v. 3,) 
and keep it till the fourteenth day, (v. 6,) and 
"Israel shall kill it in the evening, (v. 6,) and 
ye shall let nothing of it remain till the morn- 
ing, (v. 10 ;) for I will pass through the land of 
Egypt this night" — that is, this night wherein 
Israel is eating the Passover. Hazzah is here 
used necessarily instead of hahua, for which 
Golenso pleads, because hahua would have re- 
ferred to the tenth day, while the reference was 
clearly to the fourteenth. 

Colenso's argument is self-destructive, for it 
proves too much. Moses must have been a per- 
fect fool to have ordered them to do something 
on the tenth to. prepare for the fourteenth, and 
with the same breath say that it was to protect 
them from a plague coming before the tenth. 

The best answer that can be given to Chapter 
X is a simple reading of Exodus, chapter xii. 
It is clear at first reading. It grows clearer at 
after readings. If any one will read the account 
given in the chapter, he will see that the Bishop 



112 , COLENSO'S FALLACIES. 

garbles the story; for in verse third they were 
told what to do on the tenth of the month, in 
making ready for the Passover on the four- 
teenth. "According to the story," they had 
plenty of time; according to Colenso, they had 
not. Choose ye which you will believe, the ac- 
count given by Moses as it stands in the 12th 
of Exodus, or the account manufactured by Co- 
lenso. 

I read in the American Cyclopedia that "Israel 
Putnam was an American General in the Revo- 
lutionary War^ born January 7, 1718, died 
May 19, 1790." Then follows the story of his 
life. Now, on Colenso' s new style of criticism, 
I can not believe that such a man as Putnam 
ever lived, because the account of his life does 
not come between his birth and death. 






THE MARCH OUT OF EGYPT. 113 



CHAPTER XIY. 

THE MARCH OUT OF EGYPT. 

The argument in Chapter XI is this : Two 

millions of people, scattered over a large tract 

''-••-■ „•...-•• -. ..-.....,•.. ._.-...-.-, - - ■■ 

of country, were all warned to leave at midnight _ 
and march out of Egypt, which they did the _ 
very day they were warned, which is impossible ; 
therefore, "the Pentateuch is unhistorical." 

This impossibility is augmented by the fact 
that in the city of London there are 264 births 
every day. 

Colenso assumes that every Hebrew man and 
woman left Egypt that day, which the story does 
not claim. It is not even stated so in general 
terms. This must be shown before this last ar- 
gument can have any force. 

Let us look at the facts : They had, at least, 

four days' warning, (Ex. xii, 3, 6,) and probably 

8 



114 COLENSO'S FALLACIES. 

longer, and knew whither they were going, (vs. 
25 and 26.) Verse 36 says, " The Lord gave 
the people favor in the sight of the Egyptians, 
so that they lent unto them such as they re- 
quired." Verse 33 : " And the Egyptians were 
urgent upon the people that they might send 
them out of the land in haste" 

True, there was an immense multitude to be 
fitted out, but there was an immense multi- 
tude to fit them out, and the very strongest 
possible motives to make the Egyptians aid 
them. The question is simply this : Could one 
family, with all the aids which the Egyptians 
could give them, pack up and move from Ra- 
meses, one day's journey to Succoth, where they 
encamped — because this name simply signifies 
where they stopped — called Succoth on account 
of the booths or tents they pitched there? 
If one family could thus march out, then all 
could; for each family had only its own neces- 
sities to attend to. 

A regiment of men can strike their tents and 






THE MARCH OUT OF EGYPT. 115 

be on the march in half an hour, simply because 
there are a thousand men to do the work. Ac- 
cording to Colenso, it would take several days 
with all Israel to do the work, and all the 
Egyptians working for their lives to help them. 
"According to the story," the march out of 
Egypt was comparatively easy, and, therefore, 
so far as Chapter XI goes, the Pentateuch is 
historical. 



116 COLENSO'S FALLACIES. 



CHAPTEE XY. 

THE SHEEP AND CATTLE OF THE ISRAELITES IN 
THE DESERT. 

Colenso quotes extensively from Canon Stan- 
ley, showing the nature of the country through 
which the Israelites must have journeyed in 
passing from the Red Sea to Sinai. I will give 
it, to show how Colenso leaps over centuries as 
nothing, to maintain a weak point : 

" The wind drove us to shore — the shores of 
Arabia and Asia. We landed in a driving 
sand-storm, and reached this place, Ayun-Musa, 
the wells of Moses. It is a strange spot, this 
plot of tamarisks, with its seventeen wells, lit- 
erally an island in the desert, and now used as 
the Richmond of Suez, a comparison which 
chiefly serves to show what a place Suez itself 
must be. Behind that African range lay Egypt, 



SHEEP AND CATTLE. 117 

with all its wonders — the green fields of the 
Nile, the immense cities, the greatest monuments 
of human power and wisdom. On this Asiatic 
side begins immediately a wide circle of level 
desert, stone, and sand, free as air, but with no 
trace of human habitation or art, where they 
might wander, as far as they saw, forever and 
ever. And between the two rolled the deep 
waters of the Red Sea, rising and falling with 
the tides, which, except on its shores, none of 
them could have seen — the tides of the great 
Indian Ocean, unlike the still, dead waters of the 
Mediterranean Sea. 

" The day after leaving Ayun-Musa was at 
first within sight of the blue channel of the Red 
Sea. But soon Red Sea and all were lost in a 
sand-storm, which lasted the whole day. (I have 
retained this account of the sand-storm, chiefly 
because it seems to be a phenomenon peculiar 
to this special region. Van Egmont, Niebuhr, 
Miss Martineau, all noticed it ; and it was just 
as violent at the passage of a friend in 1841, 



118 COLENSO'S FALLACIES. 

and again of another, two months after ourselves, 
in 1853.) Imagine all distant objects entirely 
lost to view — the sheets of sand floating along 
the surface of the desert, like streams of water, 
the whole air filled with a tempest of sand, driv- 
ing in your face like sleet. 

" We were, undoubtedly, on the track of the 
Israelites ; and we saw the spring, which most 
travelers believe to be Marah, and the two val- 
leys, one of which must almost certainly, both 
perhaps, be Elim. The general scenery is either 
immense plains, [that is, bare and barren plains 
of sand, or, latterly, a succession of water- 
courses, as described below,] exactly like the 
dry bed of a Spanish river. These gullies grad- 
ually bring you into the heart of strange black 
and white mountains. For the most part the 
desert was absolutely bare. But the two rivals 
for Elim are fringed with trees and shrubs, the 
first vegetation we have met in the desert. 
First, there are the wild palms, successors of the 
c threescore and ten,' not like those of Egypt or 



SHEEP AND CATTLE. 119 

of pictures, but either dwarf, that is, trunkless, 
or else with savage, hairy trunks, and branches 
all disheveled. Then there are the feathery tam- 
arisks, here assuming gnarled boughs and hoary 
heads, on whose leaves is found what the Arabs 
call manna. Thirdly, there is the wild acacia, 
but this is also tangled by its desert growth into 
a thicket — the tree of the burning bush and the 
shittim-wood of the tabernacle. ... A stair 
of rock brought us into a glorious wady, inclosed 
between red granite mountains, descending pre- 
cipitously upon the sands. I can not too often 
repeat that these wadys are exactly like rivers, 
except in having no ivater ; and it is this appear- 
ance of torrent-bed and banks, and clefts in the 
rocks for tributary streams, and at times even 
rushes and shrubs fringing their course, which 
gives to the whole wilderness a doubly dry and 
thirsty aspect — signs of ' water, water, every- 
where, and not a drop to drink P " 

From this description of the country, as it is 
to-day, Colenso is unable to see how the Israel- 



120 



ites could feed their cattle in the desert, and 
concludes that "therefore the Pentateuch is un- 
historical." 

A writer in the "Christian Observer" re- 
marks, "that the bordering countries, Moab, 
Midian, etc., were then far more prosperous than 
now, on account of the curse pronounced upon 
them in Jer. xlviii, Ezek. xxv, 35," etc. Ac- 
cording to the story, we are left to believe that 
the Israelites spread over the country, as wan- 
dering tribes now do, having the tabernacle as 
their head- quarters. Surely, there w^ere men, 
women, and children enough to watch and herd 
the cattle. 



NUMBER OF THE ISRAELITES. 121 



CHAPTEE XYI. 

THE NUMBER OE THE ISRAELITES COMPARED WITH 



THE EXTENT OF THE LAND OF CANAAN. 

Colenso's argument in Chapter XIII is this : 

God said he would drive out the inhabitants 
of Canaan little by little, lest the beasts of the 
field should multiply against them. 

But Colenso says the Israelites would have 
settled the country twice as thickly as the coun- 
ties of Norfolk, Suffolk, and Essex, and there- 
fore there could have been no danger from the 
beasts of the field; and therefore "the Penta- 
teuch is unhistorical." 

Now for the facts: Colenso figures on the 
little spot of land divided among the tribes. 
God figured on the country between the River 
of Egypt and the River Euphrates, (Gen. xv, 
18.) Add to this fact another, namely, that 



122 



fire-arms were unknown to the Israelites, and 
Chapter XIII goes the way of all the rest of 
the Bishop's infidelity. 



NUMBER OF THE FIRST-BORN. 123 



CHAPTER XYII. 

THE NUMBER OF THE FIRST-BORN COMPARED 
WITH THE NUMBER OF MALE ADULTS, 

The argument in Chapter XIV is this : 

There were 600,000 warriors, therefore, prob- 
ably 900,000 males of all ages,-but only 22,273 
first-borns. Therefore, each mother must have 
had forty-two children. This, Colenso says, is 
impossible ; therefore, " the Pentateuch is unhis- 
torical." 

Let us see what a careful examination of the 
text will lead us to in reference to the time when 
this covenant of first-horn commences. 

Yerse 13 tells us that "all the first-born are 
mine." Why? Because "on the day that I 
smote all the first-born in the land of Egypt, I 
hallowed unto me all the first-born in Israel, 
both man and beast" This points out clearly 



124 



when the covenant began, and consequently 
what first-borns are meant. That this is not 
retrospective is further substantiated by the fol- 
lowing facts: In Lev. xxvii, speaking of what 
they shall do in connection ivith the year of 
Jubilee, consequently future, " only the first- 
ling of the beasts, which should be the Lord's, 
no man shall sanctify it; whether it be ox, or 
sheep : it is the Lord's," (v. 26.) 

Again, (Ex. xiii, 13 :) " And all the first-born 
of man among thy children shalt thou redeem." 
Again, (Ex. xiii, 2 :) " Sanctify unto me all the 
first-born, whatsoever openeth the womb among 
the children of Israel." 

Again, it is a law of interpretation, that, 
when an interpretation makes an author of 
known ability a fool, the fault is to be charged 
rather upon the interpretation than upon the 
author. Now, when there is no reason in the 
text why this covenant should be retrospective, 
and according to the common-sense of all com- 
pacts that it should not be, we are in the pres- 



NUMBER OF THE FIRST-BORN. 125 

ence of the evidence (Num. iii, 13,. and Ex. xiii, 
13) bound to believe the plainer interpretation, 
especially when that removes the charge of 
imbecility from an author of Moses' accuracy 
and poiver. 

The 22,273 first-borns number the mothers 
since the Passover, and not all the mothers. 
Consequently, this removes Colenso's difficulty. 
That this is the correct understanding is further 
shown by the following calculations : The total 
number of the Levites, 22,300 = 7,500, (v. 22,) 
plus 8,600, (v. 28,) plus 6,200, (v. 34,) = 22,- 
300; whereas only 22,000 were available as sub- 
stitutes for the first-born. The other 300 were, 
undoubtedly, first-born of the Levites, and must 
stand for themselves. The first-born of the 
Levites are in the proportion of 300 to 22,000; 
that is, 1 to 74. The 600,000 fighting men 
would be about one-third of the male population. 
The male population would be 1,800,000. This 
divided by 22,000, the first-borns, have the rate 
of 1 to 81. If the warriors were a little more 



126 



than one- third, and still less than one-half of 
the males, we would have 1 to 74, the propor- 
tion of first-born among the Levites. See, on 
this point, Mahan, page 122 ; also Poole, Num. 
iii, 39. Surely, there can be no difficulty in 
believing that 1 in 74 of the males should have 
had a first-born in two years. 

The fact that this removes the difficulty in- 
dicates that the covenant was not retrospective; 
that is, it included only the first-borns since the 
Passover. And as there is nothing against it 
in the text, it is pkobable, at all events possi- 
ble, and if possible, the objection of Colenso 
can not prove the "story false." Therefore, it 
may be true, so far as Chap. XIV goes. 






THE ISRAELITES IN EGYPT. 127 



CHAPTEE XYIII. 

THE SOJOURNING OF THE ISRAELITES IN EGYPT, 

AND THE EXODUS IN THE FOURTH 

GENERATION. 

In Chapter XV Colenso shows that the Israel- 
ites sojourned in Egypt two hundred and fifteen 
years, from the descent of Jacob to the exodus 
under Moses. Granted. 

In Chapter XVI Colenso labors to show the 
exodus in the fourth generation. Let us see. 
In one sense true; namely, Moses and Aaron, 
who were the head and front of the exodus, 
were of the fourth generation; namely, Levi, 
Kohath, Amram, and Moses; that is, fifty-four 
years to each generation; quite possible in a 
long-lived family. But is it fair to take a few 
special cases, and deduce a sweeping rule, con- 
trary to the plain statements of Scriptures? 



128 COLENSO'S FALLACIES. 

Evidently not, and it can be done only when a 
hard case is to be made out against evidence. 
Feeling embarrassed by the genealogies given in 
1 Chron. vii, Colenso rejects the whole account 
as contradictory and impossible. And to justify 
this rejection he affirms (page 158) that "in 
truth the account of Joshua's descent in 1 Chron. 
vii, involves a palpable contradiction. Thus, in 
verse 24, we are told that Ephraim's daughter 
built two villages in the land of Canaan. If we 
suppose this to mean that the descendants of 
Ephraim's daughter, after the conquest in the 
time of Joshua, did this, yet in verses 22, 23 
we have this most astonishing fact stated, that 
Ephraim himself, after the slaughter by the men 
of Gath of his descendants in the seventh gen- 
eration, 'mourned many days,' and then married 
again, and had a son, Beriah, who was the an- 
cestor of Joshua ! This Beriah, however, is not 
named at all among the sons of Ephraim in the 
list given in Num. xxvi, 35." 

I will here give Mahan's reply to this point. 



THE ISRAELITES IN EGYPT. 129 

Seeking the truth I will not go around a correct 

exposition because it is another's: 

"He has not only failed to read with his 

mind, but even his eyes in this instance have 

failed to serve him. Ephraim' s family list, as is 

common enough in Scripture, contains several 

genealogies along side of one another. It begins 

with Shuthelah, the first-born, and then goes on 

with 'his son' and 'his son,' and so on for six 

generations. It then comes back to the second 

and third sons of Ephraim, 'Ezer and Elead, 

whom the men of Gath slew, because they came 

down to take their cattle.' It then relates the 

birth of a fourth son of Ephraim, Beriah, and 

proceeds with 'his son,' and so on. Finally, it 

gives a fifth son of Ephraim, JEdau or Erau, 

and comes to Joshua in the fourth generation 

from Ephraim. This the reader will readily 

perceive if he will observe that the sons of 

Ephraim are connected by a copulative, as ' and,' 

while the grandsons and other lineal descendants 

are distinguished by the phrase, 6 and his son.' " 
9 



130 COLENSO'S FALLACIES. 

If we reject the exposition of the LXX which 
puts Laadan, (v. 26,) in the dative to distinguish 
him as a son of Ephraim, and call Laadan the 
son of Tahan, we then have Joshua in the ninth 
generation, which may not be far from the truth. 
It can not be called impossible. Taking Browne's 
and Mahan's exposition, sustained by the LXX, 
we have Joshua in the fifth generation. In either 
case there is no impossibility, and no conflict with 
the Word. So, understand this as you choose, 
and you do not involve us in any difficulty. 

Colenso wants »a contradiction in this story, so 
he manufactures it out of the whole cloth, by 
calling Eyer and Elead the seventh generation, 
while the text distinctly names them as the sons 
of Ephraim himself. 

I prefer to regard Joshua as of the ninth 
generation; namely, 1. Beriah; 2. Resheph, 
who was not the son but the brother of Rephah, 
as shown by the word "also," which connects 
them, (v. 25;) 3. Telah; 4. Tahan; 5. Laadan; 
6. Ammihud; 7. Elishama; 8. Non; 9. Je- 



THE ISRAELITES IN EGYPT. 181 

hoshua. And it is not difficult to believe that 
he associates with Eleagar of the fifth. Colenso 
calls Eleagar of the fourth, (page 158,) but he 
was the son of Aaron, and consequently of the 
fifth. How often, even now, we see children 
years older than some of their uncles ! 

We now have 215 years and 9 generations, 
that is, 23f years, or nearly 24 years for each 
generation. We need only look about us even 
in moderate America, to see generations more 
closely set together than this. Let us exam- 
ine the story still further. We read (Gen. 1, 
23,) that Joseph saw the third generation of 
Ephraim's children. Ephraim was Joseph's sec- 
ond son. Now, how many years were consumed 
in this? Joseph was about thirty-five when 
Ephraim was born. He was thirty when he 
stood before Pharaoh, (Gen. xli, 46.) He mar- 
ried after that, for he was taken out of prison 
to interpret the dream, (Gen. xli, 14.) "And 
unto Joseph were born two sons before the 
years of famine," (Gen. xl, 50.) 



132 COLENSO'S FALLACIES. 

Joseph was fifty-six when Ephraim was twen- 
ty-one. Joseph lived to be 110. After Ephraim 
was twenty-one, Joseph lived 110 — 56=54, and 
in that 54 years he saw the third generation of 
Ephraim's children; that is, 18 years to each 
generation. At this rate Joshua might have 
been of the tenth generation, allowing him to 
be forty-four at the exodus, counting from the 
birth of Ephraim, nine years before the descent 
into Egypt. If the Bishop will carefully figure 
from his own premises, he will find that figures 
are stubborn tilings. 

Every honest scholar will admit that in the 
Hebrew genealogies names are often omitted. 
They seem to wish only the leading distinctive 
characters. This is shown by a comparison of 
the genealogies of Matthew and Luke. The 
relation of father and son was often applied to 
persons several generations apart, and meant, 
often, only that they were of the same family. 
So much for Chap. XVI, which was purposed 
to draw out all the generations to fifty-four 



THE ISRAELITES IN EGYPT. 133 

years each. I do not wonder that the Bishop 
worked so hard at this point, because upon this 
depends his next chapter, which is the strongest 
point in his book. Let us examine it. 



134 COLENSO's FALLACIES. 



CHAPTEE XIX. 

NUMBER OF THE ISRAELITES AT THE EXODUS. 

In Chap. 7TVTT wa find sf>Tn A " f the boldest 

assumptions and most arbitrary calculations in 
the whole volume. 

Argument: 215 years, 4 generations, 56 per- 
sons as a basis; result, 3,000,000. Impossible. 
Therefore, the Pentateuch is unhistorical. 

I will not go into the arbitrary assumptions 
by which he tries to show that there could have 
been only 5,000 warriors instead of 600,000, 
(page 153,) but will simply give the figures. 

Colenso says, (page 68,) "Benjamin must have 
been more than twenty-two" at the descent, be- 
cause he was born before Joseph was sold. Sup- 
pose he was thirty. He had ten sons, (Gen. 
xlvi, 21,) "possibly by more than one wife," 
(Colenso, page 68.) Now Calculate : In 30 years 



NUMBER OF THE ISRAELITES. 135 

there would have been 100; in 60 years, 1,000; 
in 90 years, 10,000 ; in 120 years, 100,000 ; in 
150 years, 1,000,000; in 180 years, 10,000,000; 
in 210 years, 100,000,000. This makes no ac- 
count of the children born to the parents after 
they were thirty, and it omits the millions of 
the sixth and seventh generations. And all 
this from one son, what would it have been 
from the twelve sons of Jacob? Surely, 3,000,- 
000 from 54 is not difficult; for figures are 
stubborn things. 

Now look at Schenchzer's calculation on the 
basis of four generations. The reader will find 
it quoted in Clarke's Commentary, (Num. i.) He 
shows that the 625,850 males in mature years 
were easily the product of four generations. 

If mathematics are worth any thing, they 
take the strength out of Colenso's 15th, 16th, 
and 17th chapters, and, therefore, the Penta- 
teuch is mathematically historical. 



136 COLENSO'S FALLACIES. 



CHAPTEE XX. 

THE REMAINING OBJECTIONS. 

Chapter XVIII — " The Danites and Levites 
at the time of the exodus." Argument: Dan 
had one son — therefore, he would have had 27 
warriors instead of 62,700. 

Colenso counts only four generations when 
there were from seven to ten. Dan had one 
son. If this son had only five sons, and increas- 
ing at this rate, there might have been in the 
eighth generation over 77,000. The Bishop can 
not believe that Dan's descendants could outnum- 
ber Benjamin's. I ask, where is the impossibility ? 

By similar assumptions the Levites would 
have been only 44 instead of 8,500. If the 
story recorded 44 Levites, Colenso could not 
have believed that because the assumption of 
the calculation is absurd. 



THE REMAINING OBJECTIONS. 137 

Because the Levites only increased 1,000 dur- 
ing the journey, he charges the story with in- 
consistency, and his proof is this : He assumes 
that they were free from the sentence that the 
Israelites should die in the wilderness, and says 
this is clear because, in Num. ii, 33, the Levites 
were not numbered among the children of Israel. 
Is it clear that they were, therefore, not Israel- 
ites ? The fallacy is his wrong use of the term 
" numbered" meaning " counted, not considered." 
Colenso either saw this fallacy, or he did not. 
If he did, he is dishonest. If he did not, he is 
very weak. I will not consume more time with 
answering such idle cavils. They show the 
weakness of his cause and the perverseness of 
his purpose. 

The next objection is Chapter XX — " The 
number of the priests at the exodus, compared 
with their duties and with the provisions made 
for them." 

The many offerings and cleansings to be at- 
tended to for so large a multitude, and only 



138 COLENSO'S FALLACIES. 

three priests, and these could neither do the 
work, nor eat what was brought to them. 

I will only let the Bishop answer this himself. 
He says, (page 80,) " The ministering Levites 
from thirty to fifty years old were 8,580." 

If a man contracts to make uniforms for 20,- 
000 soldiers, must he sew every stitch himself? 

Cha,pter XXI is a repetition of the same 
point in reference to the Passover, and the same 
principle of common-sense interpretation re- 
moves the difficulty. The objection is equally 
against the Passover at the Temple. 

The last chapter (XXII) is concerning the 
"war on Midian;" and, after reiterating what 
we have been reviewing, he strikes his last note 
on the cruelty of God's destroying the Midi- 
anites. 

I simply ask, Could not God have slain them 
by pestilence ? and where is the difference in the 
moral quality? After the Bishop has destroyed 
the New Testament, won't he be so kind as to 
wipe out the scheme of Providence, as seen un- 



THE REMAINING OBJECTIONS. 139 

folding in history, and then figure away as "in- 
conceivable" the system of nature? 

I will add but a few more words. As a stu- 
dent of theology, I welcome any assault upon 
the Bible, because I know that the more it is 
investigated, the more it is criticised, the clearer 
will be its evidence, and the more unquestionable 
its a uthority. "*" 

The mountain oak is a given quantity of germ 
and nourishment, combined with a given amount 
of storm and tempest. God's Word is so much 
truth from Him, so much felt want in the race, 
combined with so much criticism and scrutiny. 
It stands among us, its roots in God's eternity, 
its boughs overarching the world, dropping their 
fragrance and their fruit into these weary years, 
and its top is gilded by the light around the 
throne. Father, let me repose beneath its pro- 
tection here and enjoy its fruit up yonder, and 
unto Thee with the Son and with the Holy 
Ghost I will give ceaseless praises in that infi- 
nite forever beyond the 




W 98 83* 








°* ■ 

■- ' • « c> 
o 




















•!<•• 






3 • ^j\ <§> « Deacidified using the Bookkeeper process 
J Neutralizing agent: Magnesium Oxide 
©X/yT^PyvS** *vV«*U Treatment Date: June 2005 



<& *-?.»• 4 ,<v <^ PreservationTechnologies 

• *■'•♦ O £$? ° " * * <£ * W0RLD LEADER IN PAPER PRESERVATION 

iFiflTfosu ^ ^2 *«^S5^v** *' ' 1 1 Thornson Park Dnve 

<j* -$» 0*/*vSSsaE'V» Cranberry Township PA 16066 



*,°^ 



* : 
























>: J% 



ok sat: >o« 









* 




^oV* 









L3r * ..X* *"^.U\v^c>2» * 












lO-r. 



« * y t*. 



!• 4 0. * 



.o 

4? •!••* 



K'^T&J V™*'^ 



? » ^ v? 



% 



>. •■ 



v v ..-Jlf* <& 



'% ^ /- 



>* •!.••- 




-*U* • 



JAN 83 

N. MANCHESTER, 
INDIANA 46962 









